The Hybrid, Book 2
by Strike.x
Summary: Jack is returning for his second year at Hogwarts, but this year is going to be hectic. What will happen when Jack and Harry are selected as competitors in the Triwizard Tornament? New dangers lay ahead like they've never faced before, but something else is brewing in the shadows. Something none of them are prepared for. R&R.
1. Meeting The Relatives

****(ANYTHING YOU RECOGNIZE BELONGS TO J.K. ROWLING)****

* * *

I woke up to the most irritating sound I'd ever heard; it appeared to be a small, grey feathery tennis ball, flying around my room.

"What the hell?" I mumbled, getting up out of my warm bed. Since I was only wearing my black boxer shorts, goosebumps rose on my skin.

I leapt at least five meters upwards in one easy jump, and caught the mad twittering thing, which actually turned out to be a minute owl, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

The owl had dropped a letter on the floor, and I released the owl, which began to whiz around the room like a loose firework, and picked up the letter.

At once, I recognized Ron's handwriting, and tore open the envelope. Inside was a letter filled with Ron's untidy scrawl. It took me a few minutes with my Dyslexia to deciper it.

_**Jack -**_

_**DAD GOT TICKETS! - Ireland versus Bulgaria, Monday night. I would've sent this with Erroll, but he's too tired, so I sent it with Pig.**_

I looked up at the tiny owl now zooming across my ceiling. 'Pig?' Maybe my dyslexia was worse than I thought, or I simply couldn't read Ron's writing.

_**Mum said to ask your Dad, but we'll pick you up anyway, you can't miss the World Cup! I'll write to Harry when you send Pig back with your answer. We'll come and get you at five o'clock on Sunday. Hermione's arriving this afternoon.**_

_**See you soon - Ron.**_

"Will you calm down?" I asked as the small owl flew over my head, twittering madly. I threw the letter down on my bed and walked out of my room - making sure to close the door behind me, and went downstairs.

Moony was sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the Daily Prophet. He looked slightly surprised at my presence.

"What are you doing up?" he asked, frowning playfully. "It's not the afternoon yet, in fact," he checked his watch, "It's ten in the morning."

"Owl on drugs," I said in a way of responding, grabbing a mug and spooning some coffee into it. "Hey, Moons, can I go to the Quidditch World Cup with Ron and Harry?"

"Sure," he said easily. "When are you going?"

"Sunday, five o'clock," I said, pouring hot water into it. "The Weasley's are gonna pick me up."

"Fair enough," I grinned, it was awesome having a cool Dad. "So long as you behave."

"Don't I always?" I asked, grabbing my coffee and taking it upstairs along with a biscuit. I could hear the tiny owl still twittering away in my room, and, as I opened the door, it nearly collided with my head.

I set down my scolding hot drink and grabbed my quill and parchment, leaning on my desk:

_**Ron -**_

_**Dad said I can go, so, I'll see you five on Sunday. Can I come with to pick up Harry? Only, I can't pass up the opportunity to meet his dear relatives.**_

_**- Jack.**_

_**P.S. What drug is your owl on? I swear, it's a good thing I'm not hungry because 'Pig' would be on the menu.**_

I folded up the letter and watched as the tiny owl fluttered down on top of my wardrobe.

With great difficulty, I attempted to tie it to the tiny owl's leg as it hopped on the spot with excitement. The moment it was secure, the owl was off again; it zoomed out of the window and out of sight.

By four o'clock the next day, my trunk was packed with my school things, my savings for the World Cup and some random junk I needed to take.

I'd already been to Diagon Alley and had picked up my new school robes; I'd grown over the summer, I was a few inches taller and my hair was so long and untidy I was constantly flipping it out of my eyes, and had a habit of running my hands through it. My scars were as pronounced as ever and one of the good things about this year was I could keep my eyes gold all the time.

* * *

I sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in my hands. For most of the morning, me and Moony had been doing random things. I'd tidied my room in exchange for a few galleons and helped Moony make lunch - which, because I can't cook, turned out to be a disaster.

It was nearing five o'clock, and just when I was thinking about taking a nap, the fireplace burned emerald green, and out of it, emerged four red heads.

Welcome Weasley clan!

"Hey guys!" I said.

"Hi, Jack." The Twins and Ron said back. I saw a tall, thin man with thinning red hair and glasses. That must be their Dad.

"Hello, Mr. Weasley," I said, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. "I'm Jack, thanks for inviting me to the world cup."

"Nice to meet you, Jack," he said, then looked at his watch. "We'd better be off. I'll apperate the trunk back to the burrow, and you lot can go and fetch Harry, yes?"

We all agreed, and Mr. Weasley apperated away with my trunk and owl. I grabbed the pot of Floo Powder from on top of the fireplace and brought out a handful of it.

"What's the address again?" I asked Ron.

"Number four, Privet Drive," he said as Mr. Weasley returned.

"Got it," I said, turning around and stepping into the fireplace. "Number four, Privet Drive!" I said clearly, throwing the powder down at my feet. The flames rose up around me, and next second, I was spinning.

And then, I was in total darkness. Hitting my head on something hard and wooden.

"Ow!" I yelped in surprise.

"AAAAAAAARRRRRRGH!"

Someone screamed the other side of this blockage and the sound of three people scrambling backwards came. I pushed against it, but what appeared to be wooden panels wouldn't budge. I spun around, trying to find a way out, but there wasn't one.

"What is it?" I heard a feminine voice back. Before I could say anything, Fred appeared, knocking me back into the boards.

"Ouch! Fred, no - go back! Tell George not to - OUCH! George! There's no way out, go back quickly and tell Ron -"

"Maybe Harry can hear us?" George suggested. "Maybe he'll be able to let us out?"

We began to hammer on the boards.

"Harry? Harry, can you hear us?"

Just then, Mr. Weasley appeared.

"Boys," he said, interrupting our hammering. "What's going on?"

"We're having a party," I said sarcastically.

"Mr. Weasley, can you hear me?" Harry's voice was slightly muffled by the boards. "It's Harry... the fireplace has been blocked up. You won't be able to get through there."

"Damn!" said Mr. Weasley. "What on earth would they want to block the fireplace up for?"

"They've got an electric fire," Harry's voice reached us through the boards.

"Really?" said Mr. Weasley excitedly. There is a time and a place. "Eclectic you say? With a plug? Gracious I must see that... Let's think... ouch, Ron!"

Ron had appeared, making less than no room.

"What are we doing here? Had something gone wrong?"

"Oh no, Ron," said Fred, very sarcastically. "No, this is exactly where we wanted to end up."

"Yeah, we're having the time of our lives here," said George, he was squashed up against the wall next to me.

"Oh, these situations I manage to get into," I said.

"Boys, boys.." said Mr. Weasley. "I'm trying to figure out what to do..."

"I've got it," I said. "Stand back, Harry!"

I moved away from the fireplace in the cramped space and placed my hands against the wall, and before anyone could ask what was going on, I kicked outwards with all my strength, and the boards bust apart, the electric fire flying across the room and rubble and loose chippings rained down upon us as the Weasleys fell out of the fireplace.

I stepped out, brushing myself down.

"That's better," panted Mr. Weasley, brushing dust from his long green robes. "Thankyou, Jack - Ah, you must be Harry's Aunt and Uncle!"

Mr. Weasley extended a hand to the man, who was beefy and blonde with a walrus mustache and not much neck. His wife had twice the usual amount of neck and was thin and bony with horse like teeth. I see they got the looks in their families.

"Er - yes - sorry about that." he said, lowering his hand and looking over his shoulder at the now broken fireplace."It didn't occur to me that we wouldn't be able to get out at the other end. I had your fireplace connected to the Floo Network, you see - just for an afternoon, you know, so we could get Harry. Muggle fireplaces aren't supposed to be connected, strictly speaking - but I've got a useful contact at the Floo Regulation Panel and he fixed it for me. I can put it right in a jiffy, though, don't worry. I'll light a fire to send the boys back, and then I can repair your fireplace before I Disapparate."

I was ready to bet that the Dursleys hadn't understood a single word of this. They were still gaping at Mr. Weasley, thunderstruck. I also saw the odd glances they were throwing at me; with my scarred neck and arms, thick scar down my face, black hair and clothes and gold eyes, I wasn't too surprised.

"Hello, Harry!" said Mr. Weasley brightly. "Got your trunk ready?"

"It's upstairs," said Harry, grinning back.

"We'll get it," said Fred at once. Winking at Harry, he and George left the room.

I suspected that Fred and George were hoping for a glimpse of Dudley; we had heard a lot about him from Harry.

"Well," said Mr. Weasley, swinging his arms slightly, while he tried to find words to break the very nasty silence. "Very - erm - very nice place you've got here."

As the living room was now covered in dust and bits of brick, this remark didn't go down too well with the Dursleys. Mr. Dursley's face purpled once more, and Mrs. Dursley started chewing her tongue again. However, they seemed too scared to actually say anything.

Mr. Weasley was looking around. He loved everything to do with Muggles. I could see him itching to go and examine the television and the video recorder.

"They run off eckeltricity, do they?" he said knowledgeably. "Ah yes, I can see the plugs. I collect plugs," he added to Mr. Dursley. "And batteries. Got a very large collection of batteries. My wife thinks I'm mad, but there you are."

Mr. Dursley clearly thought Mr. Weasley was mad too. He moved ever so slightly to the right, screening his wife from view, as though he thought Mr. Weasley might suddenly run at them and attack.

Now that would be something worth witnessing.

Dudley suddenly appeared in the room. I could hear the clunk of Harry's trunk on the stairs, and knew that the sounds had scared Dudley out of the kitchen. Dudley edged along the wall, gazing at Mr. Weasley with terrified eyes, and attempted to conceal himself behind his mother and father. Unfortunately, Mr. Dursley's bulk, while sufficient to hide bony Mrs. Dursley, was nowhere near enough to conceal Dudley, who was roughly the size of a baby killer whale with blonde hair.

"Ah, this is your cousin, is it, Harry?" said Mr. Weasley, taking another brave stab at making conversation.

"Yep," said Harry, "that's Dudley."

Me and Harry exchanged glances and then quickly looked away from each other; the temptation to burst out laughing was almost overwhelming. Dudley was still clutching his bottom as though afraid it might fall off. Mr. Weasley, however, seemed genuinely concerned at Dudley's peculiar behavior. Indeed, from the tone of his voice when he next spoke, I was quite sure that Mr. Weasley thought Dudley was quite as mad as the Dursleys thought he was, except that Mr. Weasley felt sympathy rather than fear.

"Having a good holiday, Dudley?" he said kindly.

Dudley whimpered. I saw his hands tighten still harder over his massive backside. What an odd child.

Fred and George came back into the room carrying Harry's school trunk. They glanced around as they entered and spotted Dudley. Their faces cracked into identical evil grins.

"Ah, right," said Mr. Weasley. "Better get cracking then."

He pushed up the sleeves of his robes and took out his wand. I saw the Dursleys draw back against the wall as one.

"Incendio!" said Mr. Weasley, pointing his wand at the hole in the wall behind him. Flames rose at once in the fireplace, crackling merrily as though they had been burning for hours. Mr. Weasley took a small drawstring bag from his pocket, untied it, took a pinch of the powder inside, and threw it onto the flames, which turned emerald green and roared higher than ever.

"Off you go then, Fred," said Mr. Weasley.

"Coming," said Fred. "Oh no - hang on -"

A bag of sweets had spilled out of Fred's pocket and the contents were now rolling in every direction - big, fat toffees in brightly colored wrappers. Oh God. Ton-Tongue Toffees. I resisted the urge to grin.

Fred scrambled around, cramming them back into his pocket, then gave the Dursleys a cheery wave, stepped forward, and walked right into the fire, saying "the Burrow!" Mrs. Dursley gave a little shuddering gasp. There was a whooshing sound, and Fred vanished.

"Right then, George," said Mr. Weasley, "you and the trunk."

Harry helped George carry the trunk forward into the flames and turn it onto its end so that he could hold it better. Then, with a second whoosh, George had cried "the Burrow!" and vanished too.

"Ron, you next," said Mr. Weasley.

"See you," said Ron brightly to the Dursleys. He grinned broadly at Harry, then stepped into the fire, shouted "the Burrow!" and disappeared.

"Jack, your turn," Mr. Weasley prompted.

"Sorry about your house," I said to the Dursley's, not really meaning it. "You know how werewolves are."

They looked positively terrified, and I walked into the fireplace, saying clearly "The Burrow!" as I did.

"You should really be careful about where you drop your food, Twins," I said, laughing as I climbed out of the fireplace after a moment of green blur.

"Did you just call us 'Twins?'" asked Fred.

"Yes," I said. "Because you keep calling me Pup."

Just then, before the Twins could reply, Harry came tumbling into the fireplace.

"Did he eat it?" said Fred excitedly, holding out a hand to pull Harry to his feet.

"Yeah," said Harry, straightening up. "What was it?"

"Ton-Tongue Toffee," said Fred brightly. "George and I invented them, and we've been looking for someone to test them on all summer. . . ."

The tiny kitchen exploded with laughter; I looked around and saw that Ron and George were sitting at the scrubbed wooden table with two red-haired people I had never seen before, though he knew immediately who they must be: Bill and Charlie, the two eldest Weasley brothers.

"How're you doing, Jack?" said the nearer of the two, grinning at me and holding out a large hand, which I shook, feeling calluses and blisters under his fingers. This had to be Charlie, who worked with dragons in Romania. Charlie was built like the twins, shorter and stockier than Percy and Ron, who were both long and lanky. He had a broad, good-natured face, which was weather-beaten and so freckly that he looked almost tanned; his arms were muscular, and one of them had a large, shiny burn on it.

Bill got to his feet, smiling, and also shook my hand. Bill came as something of a surprise. I knew that he worked for the wizarding bank, Gringotts, and that Bill had been Head Boy at Hogwarts; I had always imagined Bill to be an older version of Percy: fussy about rule-breaking and fond of bossing everyone around. However, Bill was - there was no other word for it - cool. He was tall, with long hair that he had tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing an earring with what looked like a fang dangling from it. Bill's clothes would not have looked out of place at a rock concert, except that I recognized his boots to be made, not of leather, but of dragon hide.

"Nice to meet you, guys," I said cheerfully, "I'm Jack."

"Ah, so you're the werewolf Hybrid Ron's been telling us about." said Charlie.

"Nice going, Ronald." I said, smirking. "Why am I not surprised."

"Hey! It's a hard secret to keep!" He argued as the two elder Weasleys went to greet Harry.

Before any of us could say anything else, there was a faint popping noise, and Mr. Weasley appeared out of thin air at George's shoulder. He was looking angry.

"That wasn't funny Fred!" he shouted. "What on earth did you give that Muggle boy?"

"I didn't give him anything," said Fred, with another evil grin. "I just dropped it... It was his fault he went and ate it, I never told him to."

"You dropped it on purpose!" roared Mr. Weasley. "You knew he'd eat it, you knew he was on a diet -"

"How big did his tongue get?" George asked eagerly.

"It was four feet long before his parents would let me shrink it!"

Me, Harry and the Weasleys roared with laughter again.

"It isn't funny!" Mr. Weasley shouted. "That sort of behavior seriously undermines wizard-Muggle relations! I spend half my life campaigning against the mistreatment of Muggles, and my own sons

"We didn't give it to him because he's a Muggle!" said Fred indignantly.

"No, we gave it to him because he's a great bullying git," said George. "Isn't he, Harry?"

"Yeah, he is, Mr. Weasley," said Harry earnestly.

"That's not the point!" raged Mr. Weasley. "You wait until I tell your mother -"

"Tell me what?" said a voice behind them.

Mrs. Weasley had just entered the kitchen. She was a short, plump woman with a very kind face, though her eyes were presently narrowed with suspicion.

"Oh hello, dears," she said, spotting me and Harry and smiling. Then her eyes snapped back to her husband. "Tell me what, Arthur?"

Mr. Weasley hesitated. I could tell that, however angry he was with Fred and George, he hadn't really intended to tell Mrs. Weasley what had happened. There was a silence, while Mr. Weasley eyed his wife nervously. Then two girls appeared in the kitchen doorway behind Mrs. Weasley. One, with very bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth, Hermione. The other, who was small and red-haired, was Ron's younger sister, Ginny. Both of them smiled at me and Harry, who grinned back, which made Ginny go scarlet - she had a crush on Harry, and I turned my snort into a cough, and Harry hit me on the arm.

"Tell me what, Arthur?" Mrs. Weasley repeated, in a dangerous sort of voice.

"It's nothing, Molly," mumbled Mr. Weasley, "Fred and George just - but I've had words with them -"

"What have they done this time?" said Mrs. Weasley. "If it's got anything to do with Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes -"

"Why don't you show Harry and Jack where they're sleeping, Ron?" said Hermione from the doorway.

"He knows where he's sleeping," said Ron, "in my room, he slept there last -"

"We can all go," said Hermione pointedly.

"Oh," said Ron, cottoning on. "Right."

"Good idea," I said.

"Yeah, we'll come too," said George.

"You stay where you are!" snarled Mrs. Weasley.

Me, Harry and Ron edged out of the kitchen, and us, Hermione, and Ginny set off along the narrow hallway and up the rickety staircase that zigzagged through the house to the upper stories.

"What are Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?" Harry asked as we climbed.

Ron, Ginny and I laughed, although Hermione didn't.

"Mum found this stack of order forms when she was cleaning Fred and George's room," said Ron quietly. "Great long price lists for stuff they've invented. Joke stuff, you know. Fake wands and trick sweets, loads of stuff. It was brilliant, I never knew they'd been inventing all that..."

"We've been hearing explosions out of their room for ages, but we never thought they were actually making things," said Ginny. "We thought they just liked the noise."

"Only, most of the stuff - well, all of it, really - was a bit dangerous," said Ron, "and, you know, they were planning to sell it at Hogwarts to make some money, and Mum went mad at them. Told them they weren't allowed to make any more of it, and burned all the order forms... She's furious at them anyway. They didn't get as many O.W.L.s as she expected."

"And then there was this big row," Ginny said, "because Mum wants them to go into the Ministry of Magic like Dad, and they told her all they want to do is open a joke shop."

Just then a door on the second landing opened, and a face poked out wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a very annoyed expression.

"Hi, Percy," said Harry.

"Oh hello, Harry," said Percy. "I was wondering who was making all the noise. I'm trying to work in here, you know I've got a report to finish for the office - and it's rather difficult to concentrate when people keep thundering up and down the stairs."

"We're not thundering, "said Ron irritably. "We're walking. Sorry if we've disturbed the top-secret workings of the Ministry of Magic."

"What are you working on?" said Harry.

"A report for the Department of International Magical Cooperation," said Percy smugly. "We're trying to standardize cauldron thickness. Some of these foreign imports are just a shade too thin - leakages have been increasing at a rate of almost three percent a year -"

"That'll change the world, that report will," said Ron. "Front page of the Daily Prophet, I expect, cauldron leaks."

Percy went slightly pink.

"You might sneer, Ron," he said heatedly, "but unless some sort of international law is imposed we might well find the market flooded with flimsy, shallow-bottomed products that seriously endanger -"

"Yeah, yeah, all right," said Ron, and he started off upstairs again. Percy slammed his bedroom door shut. As me, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny followed Ron up three more flights of stairs, shouts from the kitchen below echoed up to us. It sounded as though Mr. Weasley had told Mrs. Weasley about the toffees.

The room at the top of the house where Ron slept was like a furnace - bright orange and red everywhere. The Chudley Cannons, were whirling and waving on the walls and sloping ceiling, and the fish tank on the windowsill, which had previously held frog spawn, now contained one extremely large frog. Ron's old rat, Scabbers, was here no more, but instead there was the tiny gray owl that had delivered Ron's letter to me. It was hopping up and down in a small cage and twittering madly.

"Shut up, Pig," said Ron, edging his way between two of the five beds that had been squeezed into the room. "Fred and George are in here with us, because Bill and Charlie are in their room," he told me and Harry. "Percy gets to keep his room all to himself because he's got to work."

"Er - why are you calling that owl Pig?" Harry asked Ron, voicing my thoughts.

"Because he's being stupid," said Ginny, "Its proper name is Pigwidgeon."

"Yeah, and that's not a stupid name at all," said Ron sarcastically. "Ginny named him," he explained to us. "She reckons it's sweet. And I tried to change it, but it was too late, he won't answer to anything else. So now he's Pig. I've got to keep him up here because he annoys Errol and Hermes. He annoys me too, come to that.

Pigwidgeon zoomed happily around his cage, hooting shrilly. I knew Ron too well to take him seriously. He had moaned continually about his old rat, Scabbers, but had been most upset when Hermione's cat, Crookshanks, appeared to have eaten him.

"Where's Crookshanks?" I asked Hermione.

"Out in the garden, I expect," she said. "He likes chasing gnomes. He's never seen any before."

"Percy's enjoying work, then?" said Harry, sitting down on one of the beds and watching the Chudley Cannons zooming in and out of the posters on the ceiling.

"Enjoying it?" said Ron darkly. "I don't reckon he'd come home if Dad didn't make him. He's obsessed. Just don't get him onto the subject of his boss. According to Mr. Crouch... as I was saying to Mr. Crouch... Mr. Crouch is of the opinion... Mr. Crouch was telling me... They'll be announcing their engagement any day now."

"Have you had a good summer, Harry?" said Hermione. "Did you get our food parcels and everything?"

"Yeah, thanks a lot, " said Harry. "They saved my life, those cakes."

"And have you heard from -?" Ron began, but at a look from Hermione he fell silent.

I knew Ron had been about to ask about Sirius. However, discussing him in front of Ginny was a bad idea. Nobody but ourselves and Professor Dumbledore knew about how Sirius had escaped, or believed in his innocence.

Life could be less complicated...


	2. Getting There

****(ANYTHING YOU RECOGNIZE BELONGS TO J.K. ROWLING)****

* * *

"JACK, WAKE UP!" I heard Harry say for the who knows how many'th time. I groaned. "It's the world cup!" he whispered.

I rocketed out of bed, landing skillfully on my feet. I shoved open my trunk and continued to dress myself as I jumped and hopped around the room, getting dressed. I finally got into my black jeans, black t-shirt and pulled on my leather jacket before pulling on my left shoe. I grabbed my pouch of galleons, sickles and knuts and shoved it into my pocket.

Finally, I pulled on my right shoe, then speedily tied it up. I saw Harry watching me with an amused expression and I raced out of the room, leaving him behind. I thundered past Percy's room, and he opened the door to yell at me, but I wasn't there.

I slid down the rail, making it all the way to the bottom... before I crashed into someone, sending us sprawling on to the floor.

I had tackled Charlie Weasley.

"Shit," I said, standing up. "Sorry Charlie! Here, let me help you." I reached my hand down and pulled him up by the arm as easily as if he were a small child. "Sorry, again." I said.

"Oh, no worries, no broken bones." He said. Did I detect a hint of fear in his voice?

"You're not dismissing the fact that I just tackled you because I'm a Lycan are you?" I whispered, smirking. "You don't need to be scared of me Charlie - it's not like I'd kill you if you exploded at me! Then again - nah, I wouldn't murder my best friend's older brother!"

"Don't worry about it," he said, laughing, "I'm fine, and I'm not dismissing it because you're a Lycan and you could kill me in an instant, it's because it's no big deal."

"Fair enough," I said, turning around and heading into the kitchen, laughing. "Good morning, Mrs. Weasley," I said, sitting down at the table. My three friends came walking in a few seconds later.

"Good morning, dears!" she said, placing a plate of food in front of me. "I hope you lot are ready."

"I was born ready!" I said, running a hand through my hair and messing it up even further.

"Sure you were," Ron said sarcastically, who was sitting across from me over the table.

I glared at him, and aimed a kick at him under the table.

"Ow!" he yelled, pulling his leg upwards so hard his knee hit the bottom of the table. I snickered.

"Aright, enough." said Mr. Weasley, walking into the room.

"Yeah Ron!" I smirked at him. He muttered something along the lines of '... get you back later...'

"What was that?" I grinned. "Remember Ron, I know where you sleep -" Ron looked mildly concerned " -So, when do we head out Mr. Weasley?"

"Right after breakfast," he said, smiling at me. I grinned.

Can't wait.

* * *

We walked up the hill to where the portkey was. I was grinning, mostly because I was walking with ease while my three friends were panting. Hermione looked like she was going to pass out.

I jogged back to them, and when I reached Hermione, bent down and scooped her onto my back. She protested at first, but shut up when I ran to the top of the hill. I deposited her at the top.

"Thanks Jack!" she said, grinning. I hadn't even broken a sweat.

"It was nothing. You're practically a feather to me." I smirked.

"We made good time," Mr. Weasley said when they finally joined us, all of them panting. "We've got ten minutes... Come on, spread out and find it."

We spread out in search of the small thing that I had no idea what it looked like. I jumped when a sudden voice called out "Over here, Arthur! Over here, son, we've got it!"

Two figures were silhouetted against the sky on the other side of the hilltop.

"Amos!" Mr. Weasley said, smiling as he strode over to the man who had shouted. "This is Amos Diggory, everyone, he works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. And I think you know his son, Cedric?"

I smiled at the boy; he was tall, about seventeen and someone I could see girls going crazy for. I think he was the Captain and Seeker for the Hufflepuff Quidditch team.

"Hi," he said, his eyes landing on me. Oh shit; his dad was the whatever for Magical Creatures, and Cedric - along with the rest of Hogwarts - knew I was one... Did that mean he had to deal with Werewolves?

Everybody said hi back except Fred and George, who merely nodded. They had never quite forgiven Cedric for beating Gryffindor in the first Quidditch match of the previous year.

"Long walk, Arthur?" Amos Diggory asked.

"Not too bad," said Mr. Weasley. "We live just on the other side of the village there. You?"

"Had to get up at two, didn't we, Ced? I tell you, I'll be glad when he's got his Apparition test. Still... Not complaining... Quidditch World Cup, wouldn't miss it for a sackful of Galleons - and the tickets cost about that. Mind you, looks like I got off easy..." Amos Diggory peered good-naturedly around at the three Weasley boys, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny. "All these yours, Arthur?"

"Oh no, only the redheads," said Mr. Weasley, pointing out his children. "This is Hermione and Jack - friends of Ron's - and Harry, another friend -"

"Merlin's beard," said Amos Diggory, his eyes widening. "Harry? Harry Potter?"

"Er - yeah," said Harry.

"Ced's talked about you, of course," said Amos Diggory. "Told us all about playing against you last year... I said to him, I said - Ced, that'll be something to tell your grandchildren, that will... You beat Harry Potter!"

Harry remained silent. Fred and George were both scowling again. Cedric looked slightly embarrassed.

"Harry fell off his broom, Dad," he muttered. "I told you... It was an accident..."

"Yes, but you didn't fall off, did you?" roared Amos genially, slapping his son on his back. I didn't like this man "Always modest, our Ced, always the gentleman... But the best man won, I'm sure Harry'd say the same, wouldn't you, eh? One falls off his broom, one stays on, you don't need to be a genius to tell which one's the better flier!"

Really don't like him...

"Must be nearly time," said Mr. Weasley quickly, pulling out his watch again after seeing my expression. "Do you know whether we're waiting for any more, Amos?"

"No, the Lovegoods have been there for a week already and the Fawcetts couldn't get tickets," said Mr. Diggory. "There aren't any more of us in this area, are there?"

"Not that I know of," said Mr. Weasley. "Yes, it's a minute off... We'd better get ready..."

He looked around at Harry and Hermione.

"You just need to touch the Portkey, that's all, a finger will do -"

With difficulty, owing to our bulky backpacks, the nine of us crowded around the old boot held out by Amos Diggory.

We all stood there, in a tight circle, as a chill breeze swept over the hilltop. Nobody spoke. It suddenly occurred to me how odd this would look if a Muggle were to walk up here now... nine people, two of them grown men, clutching this manky old boot in the semidarkness, waiting...

"Three..." muttered Mr. Weasley, one eye still on his watch, "two...one..."

It happened immediately: I felt as though a hook just behind my navel had been suddenly jerked irresistibly forward. My feet left the ground; I could feel Ron and Harry on either side of me, their shoulders banging into mine; we were all speeding forward in a howl of wind and swirling color; my forefinger was stuck to the boot as though it was pulling me magnetically onward and then -

My feet slammed into the ground; Ron staggered into me and I fell over with a yelp; the Portkey hit the ground near my head with a heavy thud.

I looked up. Mr. Weasley, Mr. Diggory, and Cedric were still standing, though looking very windswept; everybody else was on the ground.

"Seven past five from Stoatshead Hill," said a voice.

I disentangled myself from Ron and got to my feet with the help of Cedric. We had arrived on what appeared to be a deserted stretch of misty moor. In front of us was a pair of tired and grumpy-looking wizards, one of whom was holding a large gold watch, the other a thick roll of parchment and a quill. Both were dressed as Muggles, though very inexpertly: The man with the watch wore a tweed suit with thigh-length galoshes; his colleague, a kilt and a poncho.

"Morning, Basil," said Mr. Weasley, picking up the boot and handing it to the kilted wizard, who threw it into a large box of used Portkeys beside him; I could see an old newspaper, an empty drinks can, and a punctured football.

"Hello there, Arthur," said Basil wearily. "Not on duty, eh? It's all right for some...We've been here all night...You'd better get out of the way, we've got a big party coming in from the Black Forest at five fifteen. Hang on, I'll find your campsite...Weasley...Weasley..." He consulted his parchment list. "About a quarter of a mile's walk over there, first field you come to. Site manager's called Mr. Roberts. Diggory... second field... ask for Mr. Payne."

"Thanks, Basil," said Mr. Weasley, and he beckoned us to follow him.

We set off across the deserted moor, unable to make out much through the mist. After about twenty minutes, a small stone cottage next to a gate swam into view. Beyond it, I could just make out the ghostly shapes of hundreds and hundreds of tents, rising up the gentle slope of a large field toward a dark wood on the horizon. We said good-bye to the Diggory's and approached the cottage door.

A man was standing in the doorway, looking out at the tents. I knew at a glance that this was the only real Muggle for several acres. When he heard our footsteps, he turned his head to look at us.

"Morning!" said Mr. Weasley brightly.

"Morning," said the Muggle.

"Would you be Mr. Roberts?"

"Aye, I would," said Mr. Roberts. "And who're you?"

"Weasley - two tents, booked a couple of days ago?"

"Aye," said Mr. Roberts, consulting a list tacked to the door. "You've got a space up by the wood there. Just the one night?"

"That's it," said Mr. Weasley.

"You'll be paying now, then?" said Mr. Roberts.

"Ah - right - certainly -" said Mr. Weasley. He retreated a short distance from the cottage and beckoned Harry toward him. "Help me, Harry," he muttered, pulling a roll of Muggle money from his pocket and starting to peel the notes apart. "This one's a - a - a ten? Ah yes, I see the little number on it now... So this is a five?"

"A twenty," Harry corrected him in an undertone, and I was aware of Mr. Roberts trying to catch every word.

"Ah yes, so it is... I don't know, these little bits of paper..."

"You foreign?" said Mr. Roberts as Mr. Weasley returned with the correct notes. Crap. Do something Mr. Weasley!

"Foreign?" repeated Mr. Weasley, puzzled.

"You're not the first one who's had trouble with money," said Mr. Roberts, scrutinizing Mr. Weasley closely. "I had two try and pay me with great gold coins the size of hubcaps ten minutes ago."

"Did you really?" said Mr. Weasley nervously.

Mr. Roberts rummaged around in a tin for some change.

"Never been this crowded," he said suddenly, looking out over the misty field again. "Hundreds of pre-bookings. People usually just turn up..."

"Is that right?" said Mr. Weasley, his hand held out for his change, but Mr. Roberts didn't give it to him. Oh, not good

"Aye," he said thoughtfully. "People from all over. Loads of foreigners. And not just foreigners. Weirdos, you know? There's a bloke walking 'round in a kilt and a poncho."

"Shouldn't he?" said Mr. Weasley anxiously.

"It's like some sort of... I dunno... like some sort of rally," said Mr. Roberts. "They all seem to know each other. Like a big party."

At that moment, a wizard in plus-fours appeared out of thin air next to Mr. Roberts's front door. I yelled out, leaping backwards so that someone caught me, bridal style.

"Obliviate!" he said sharply, pointing his wand at Mr. Roberts.

Instantly, Mr. Roberts's eyes slid out of focus, his brows unknitted, and a took of dreamy unconcern fell over his face. I recognized the symptoms of one who had just had his memory modified.

"A map of the campsite for you," Mr. Roberts said placidly to Mr. Weasley. "And your change."

"Thanks very much," said Mr. Weasley.

I looked to see who's arms I had jumped into, and realized it was Harry, who was trying not to laugh.

"Shut up..." I muttered, jumping down.

The wizard in plus-fours accompanied us toward the gate to the campsite. He looked exhausted: His chin was blue with stubble and there were deep purple shadows under his eyes. Once out of earshot of Mr. Roberts, he muttered to Mr. Weasley, "Been having a lot of trouble with him. Needs a Memory Charm ten times a day to keep him happy. And Ludo Bagman's not helping. Trotting around talking about Bludgers and Quaffles at the top of his voice, not a worry about anti-Muggle security Blimey, I'll be glad when this is over. See you later, Arthur."

He Disapparated.

"I thought Mr. Bagman was Head of Magical Games and Sports," said Ginny, looking surprised. "He should know better than to talk about Bludgers near Muggles, shouldn't he?"

"He should," said Mr. Weasley, smiling, and leading them through the gates into the campsite, "but Ludo's always been a bit... well... lax about security. You couldn't wish for a more enthusiastic head of the sports department though. He played Quidditch for England himself, you know. And he was the best Beater the Wimbourne Wasps ever had."

They trudged up the misty field between long rows of tents. Most looked almost ordinary; their owners had clearly tried to make them as Muggle-like as possible, but had slipped up by adding chimneys, or bellpulls, or weather vanes. However, here and there was a tent so obviously magical that Harry could hardly be surprised that Mr. Roberts was getting suspicious. Halfway up the field stood an extravagant confection of striped silk like a miniature palace, with several live peacocks tethered at the entrance. A little farther on they passed a tent that had three floors and several turrets; and a short way beyond that was a tent that had a front garden attached, complete with birdbath, sundial, and fountain.

"Always the same," said Mr. Weasley, smiling. "We can't resist showing off when we get together. Ah, here we are, look, this is us."

They had reached the very edge of the wood at the top of the field, and here was an empty space, with a small sign hammered into the ground that read WEEZLY.

"Couldn't have a better spot!" said Mr. Weasley happily. "The field is just on the other side of the wood there, we're as close as we could be." He hoisted his backpack from his shoulders. "Right," he said excitedly, "no magic allowed, strictly speaking, not when we're out in these numbers on Muggle land. We'll be putting these tents up by hand! Shouldn't be too difficult... Muggles do it all the time... Here, Harry, where do you reckon we should start?"

Once the tent was finished, Harry looked at the tent like 'What the fuck, how will we fit eleven people in there?' Hermione seemed to have spotted this problem too; she gave me a quizzical look as Mr. Weasley dropped to his hands and knees and entered the first tent.

"We'll be a bit cramped," he called, "but I think we'll all squeeze in. Come and have a look."

I bent down, ducked under the tent flap, I had walked into what looked like an old-fashioned, three room flat, complete with bathroom and kitchen. There were crocheted covers on the mismatched chairs and a strong smell of cats. Ew.

"Well, it's not for long," said Mr. Weasley, mopping his bald patch with a handkerchief and peering in at the four bunk beds that stood in the bedroom. I borrowed this from Perkins at the office. Doesn't camp much anymore, poor fellow, he's got lumbago."

He picked up the dusty kettle and peered inside it. "We'll need water..."

"There's a tap marked on this map the Muggle gave us," said Ron, who had followed Harry inside the tent and seemed completely unimpressed by its extraordinary inner proportions. "It's on the other side of the field."

"Well, why don't you, Harry, Jack and Hermione go and get us some water then -" Mr. Weasley handed over the kettle and a couple of saucepans "- and the rest of us will get some wood for a fire?"

I moaned, and flopped down onto one of the spare beds. Mr. Weasley laughed and said "Or just you three while Jack takes a nap..."

So I did.

* * *

I was shaken awake by an excited Ginny, and half stumbled out of the tent.

"Hey, there's sleeping beauty!" The Twins said loudly. Wizards all over the place were heading into the forest. I made sure I had my pouch of money as we walked through, looking at all of the things for sale. I purchased a set of Omnioculars, and a flag, half-and-half, both teams on one.

"It's time!" Mr. Weasley said, excitedly, as a deep, booming gong sounded somewhere beyond the woods, "Come on, let's go!"


	3. The Game

****(ANYTHING YOU RECOGNIZE BELONGS TO J.K. ROWLING)****

* * *

Clutching our purchases, Mr. Weasley in the lead, we all hurried into the wood, following the lantern-lit trail. All around me I could hear the sounds of thousands of people moving around us, shouts and laughter, snatches of singing. The atmosphere of feverish excitement was highly infectious; I couldn't stop grinning.

We walked through the wood for twenty minutes - but what felt like hours - talking and joking loudly, until at last we emerged on the other side and found ourselves in the shadow of a gigantic stadium.

"Seats a hundred thousand," said Mr. Weasley, spotting the awestruck look on Harry's face. "Ministry task force of five hundred have been working on it all year. Muggle Repelling Charms on every inch of it. Every time Muggles have got anywhere near here all year, they've suddenly remembered urgent appointments and had to dash away again... bless them," he added fondly, leading the way toward the nearest entrance, which was already surrounded by a swarm of shouting witches and wizards.

"Prime seats!" said the Ministry witch at the entrance when she checked their tickets. "Top Box! Straight upstairs, Arthur, and as high as you can go."

The stairs into the stadium were carpeted in rich purple. Everyone clambered upwards with the rest of the crowd, which slowly filtered away through doors into the stands to our left and right. Mr. Weasley kept climbing, and at last we reached the top of the staircase and found ourselves in a small box, set at the highest point of the stadium and situated exactly halfway between the golden goal posts. About twenty purple-and-gilt chairs stood in two rows here, and I looked down upon a scene the likes of which I could never have imagined.

A hundred thousand witches and wizards were taking their places in the seats, which rose in levels around the long oval field. Everything was suffused with a mysterious golden light, which seemed to come from the stadium itself. The field looked smooth as velvet from our lofty position. At either end of the field stood three goal hoops, fifty feet high; right opposite them, almost at my eye level, was a gigantic blackboard. Gold writing kept dashing across it as though an invisible giant's hand were scrawling upon the blackboard and then wiping it off again; watching it, I saw that it was flashing advertisements across the field:

**The Bluebottle: A broom for All the Family - safe, reliable, and with Built-in Anti-Burgler Buzzer... Mrs. Shower's All Purpose Magical Mess Remover: No Pain, No Stain!... Gladrags Wizardwear - London, Paris, Hogsmeade... **

I was stunned, and had my eyes up against my Omnioculars, checking out all of the features. I was amazed. God, I love being a wizard!

"Dobby?" said Harry suddenly, making me jump. I turned to face Harry, ready to snap his head off and eat it with a side of bacon. But I noticed he wasn't looking at me, but behind him. I saw there was a House-Elf. The tiny creature looked up and stretched its fingers, revealing enormous brown eyes and a nose the exact size and shape of a large tomato.

"Did sir just call me Dobby?" squeaked the elf curiously from between its fingers. Its voice was high and I suspected it was a female House-Elf

"Sorry," Harry told the elf, "I just thought you were someone I knew."

I tuned myself out of their conversation then, as it wasn't holding much interest for me. I stared around through my Omnioculars again, looking at... Everything.

The box filled gradually around us over the next half hour. Mr. Weasley kept shaking hands with people who were obviously very important wizards. Percy jumped to his feet so often that he looked as though he were trying to sit on a hedgehog. When Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic himself, arrived, Percy bowed so low that his glasses fell off and shattered, sending me into a laughing fit. Highly embarrassed, he repaired them with his wand and thereafter remained in his seat, throwing jealous looks at Harry, whom Cornelius Fudge had greeted like an old friend. They had met before, and Fudge shook Harry's hand in a fatherly fashion, asked how he was, and introduced him to the wizards on either side of him.

"Harry Potter, you know," he told the Bulgarian minister loudly, who was wearing splendid robes of black velvet trimmed with gold and didn't seem to understand a word of English. "Harry Potter... oh come on now, you know who he is... The boy who survived You-Know-Who... you do know who he is -"

The Bulgarian wizard suddenly spotted Harry's scar and started gabbling loudly and excitedly, pointing at it.

I realized then that the Minister of Magic, along with the others in the top box, were acting wearily towards me. I shrugged it off, turning to face the front.

"Ah, and here's Lucius!"

Me, Harry, Ron, and Hermione turned quickly. Edging along the second row to three still-empty seats right behind Mr. Weasley were none other than who I supposed was Lucius Malfoy, Draco, and a woman I supposed must be Draco's mother.

A pale boy with a pointed face and white-blond hair, Draco greatly resembled his father. His mother was blonde too; tall and slim, she would have been nice-looking if she hadn't been wearing a look that suggested there was a nasty smell under her nose.

"Ah, Fudge," said Mr. Malfoy, holding out his hand as he reached the Minister of Magic. "How are you? I don't think you've met my wife, Narcissa? Or our son, Draco?"

"How do you do, how do you do?" said Fudge, smiling and bowing to Mrs. Malfoy. "And allow me to introduce you to Mr. Oblansk - Obalonsk - Mr. - well, he's the Bulgarian Minister of Magic, and he can't understand a word I'm saying anyway, so never mind. And let's see who else - you know Arthur Weasley, I daresay?"

It was a tense moment. Mr. Malfoy's cold gray eyes swept over Mr. Weasley, and then up and down the row.

"Good lord, Arthur," he said softly. "What did you have to sell to get seats in the Top Box? Surely your house wouldn't have fetched this much?" He looked at me "And I didn't know you were aloud to bring pets."

Oooh, that bitch is dead.

Fudge, who wasn't listening - as usual - said, "Lucius has just given a very generous contribution to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, Arthur. He's here as my guest."

"How - how nice," said Mr. Weasley, with a very strained smile.

Mr. Malfoy's eyes had returned to Hermione, who went slightly pink, but stared determinedly back at him. Then, he carefully looked at me. I knew exactly what was making Mr. Malfoy's lip curl like that. The Malfoys prided themselves on being purebloods; in other words, they considered anyone of Muggle descent, like Hermione, second-class, and Werewolves, like me, below that. However, under the gaze of the Minister of Magic, Mr. Malfoy didn't dare say anything. He nodded sneeringly to Mr. Weasley and continued down the line to his seats. Draco shot me, Harry, Ron, and Hermione one contemptuous look, then settled himself between his mother and father.

"Slimy gits," Ron muttered as he, Harry, Hermione and I turned to face the field again. Next moment, Ludo Bagman charged into the box.

"Everyone ready?" he said, his round face gleaming like a great, excited Edam. "Minister - ready to go?"

"Ready when you are, Ludo," said Fudge comfortably.

Ludo whipped out his wand, directed it at his own throat, and said "Sonorus!" and then spoke over the roar of sound that was now filling the packed stadium; his voice echoed over us, booming into every corner of the stands.

"Ladies and gentlemen...welcome! Welcome to the final of the four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup!"

The spectators screamed and clapped. Thousands of flags waved, adding their discordant national anthems to the racket. The huge blackboard opposite us was wiped clear of its last message **(Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans - A Risk With Every Mouthful!) and now showed BULGARIA: 0, IRELAND: 0. **

"And now, without further ado, allow me to introduce... the Bulgarian National Team Mascots!"

The right-hand side of the stands, which was a solid block of scarlet, roared its approval.

"I wonder what they've brought," said Mr. Weasley, leaning forward in his seat. "Aaah!" He suddenly whipped off his glasses and polished them hurriedly on his robes. "Veela!"

"What are veel -?"

But a hundred veela were now gliding out onto the field, and Harry's question was answered for him. Veela were women... very pretty women, I'll admit, but they didn't have an effect on me - being a werewolf and all.

The veela had started to dance, and Harry's face had gone completely blank. Ah, this couldn't be good.

"Harry, what are you doing?" said Hermione as Harry walked to the edge of the box.

The music stopped. Harry blinked. Next to him, Ron was frozen in an attitude that looked as though he were about to dive from a springboard.

Angry yells were filling the stadium. The crowd didn't want the veela to go. Ron, meanwhile, was absentmindedly shredding the shamrocks on his hat. Mr. Weasley, smiling slightly, leaned over to Ron and tugged the hat out of his hands.

"You'll be wanting that," he said, "once Ireland have had their say."

"Huh?" said Ron, staring open mouthed at the veela, who had now lined up along one side of the field.

Hermione made a loud tutting noise. She reached up and pulled Harry back into his seat. "Honestly!" she said. I laughed.

"And now," roared Ludo Bagman's voice, "kindly put your wands in the air... for the Irish National Team Mascots!"

Next moment, what seemed to be a great green-and-gold comet came zooming into the stadium. It did one circuit of the stadium, then split into two smaller comets, each hurtling toward the goal posts. A rainbow arced suddenly across the field, connecting the two balls of light. The crowd oooohed and aaaaahed, as though at a fireworks display. Now the rainbow faded and the balls of light reunited and merged; they had formed a great shimmering shamrock, which rose up into the sky and began to soar over the stands. Something like golden rain seemed to be falling from it -

"Excellent!" yelled Ron as the shamrock soared over us, and heavy gold coins rained from it, bouncing off our heads and seats. Squinting up at the shamrock, I realized that it was actually comprised of thousands of tiny little bearded men with red vests, each carrying a minute lamp of gold or green.

"Leprechauns!" said Mr. Weasley over the tumultuous applause of the crowd, many of whom were still fighting and rummaging around under their chairs to retrieve the gold.

"There you go," Ron yelled happily, stuffing a fistful of gold coins into Harry's hand, "for the Omnioculars! Now you've got to buy me a Christmas present, ha!"

The great shamrock dissolved, the leprechauns drifted down onto the field on the opposite side from the veela, and settled themselves cross-legged to watch the match.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, kindly welcome - the Bulgarian National Quidditch Team! I give you - Dimitrov!"

A scarlet-clad figure on a broomstick, moving so fast it was blurred, shot out onto the field from an entrance far below, to wild applause from the Bulgarian supporters.

"Ivanova!"

A second scarlet-robed player zoomed out.

"Zograf! Levski! Vulchanov! Volkov! Aaaaaaand - Krum!"

"That's him, that's him!" yelled Ron, following Krum with his Omnioculars. I quickly focused my own.

Viktor Krum was thin, dark, and sallow-skinned, with a large curved nose and thick black eyebrows. He looked like an overgrown bird of prey. It was hard to believe he was only eighteen.

"And now, please greet - the Irish National Quidditch Team!" yelled Bagman. "Presenting - Connolly! Ryan! Troy! Mullet! Moran! Quigley! Aaaaaand - Lynch!"

Seven green blurs swept onto the field; I spun a small dial on the side of my Omnioculars and slowed the players down enough to read the word "Firebolt" on each of their brooms and see their names, embroidered in silver, upon their backs.

"And here, all the way from Egypt, our referee, acclaimed Chairwizard of the International Association of Quidditch, Hassan Mostafa!"

A small and skinny wizard, completely bald but with a mustache to rival Harry's Uncle, wearing robes of pure gold to match the stadium, strode out onto the field. A silver whistle was protruding from under the mustache, and he was carrying a large wooden crate under one arm, his broomstick under the other. I spun the speed dial on my Omnioculars back to normal, watching closely as Mostafa mounted his broomstick and kicked the crate open - four balls burst into the air: the scarlet Quaffle, the two black Bludgers, and the minuscule, winged Golden Snitch. With a sharp blast on his whistle, Mostafa shot into the air after the balls.

"Theeeeeeeey're OFF!" screamed Bagman. "And it's Mullet! Troy! Moran! Dimitrov! Back to Mullet! Troy! Levski! Moran!"

It was Quidditch as I had never seen it played before. The speed of the players was incredible - the Chasers were throwing the Quaffle to one another so fast that Bagman only had time to say their names.

_**HAWKSHEAD ATTACKING FORMATION**_, I read as I watched the three Irish Chasers zoom closely together, Troy in the center, slightly ahead of Mullet and Moran, bearing down upon the Bulgarians. _**PORSKOFF PLOY **_flashed up next, as Troy made as though to dart upward with the Quaffle, drawing away the Bulgarian Chaser Ivanova and dropping the Quaffle to Moran. One of the Bulgarian Beaters, Volkov, swung hard at a passing Bludger with his small club, knocking it into Moran's path; Moran ducked to avoid the Bludger and dropped the Quaffle; and Levski, soaring beneath, caught it, then passed it to Troy, who threw it right through the center hoop

"TROY SCORES!" roared Bagman, and the stadium shuddered with a roar of applause and cheers. "Ten zero to Ireland!"

"What?" Harry yelled, looking wildly around through his Omnioculars. "But Levski's got the Quaffle!"

"Harry, if you're not going to watch at normal speed, you're going to miss things!" shouted Hermione, who was dancing up and down, waving her arms in the air while Troy did a lap of honor around the field. I looked over and saw that the leprechauns watching from the sidelines had all risen into the air again and formed the great, glittering shamrock. Across the field, the veela were watching them sulkily.

I knew enough about Quidditch to see that the Irish Chasers were superb. They worked as a seamless team, their movements so well coordinated that they appeared to be reading one another's minds as they positioned themselves, and the rosette on Harry's chest kept squeaking their names: "Troy - Mullet - Moran!" ittitating the hell out of me. And within ten minutes, Ireland had scored twice more, bringing their lead to thirty-zero and causing a thunderous tide of roars and applause from the green-clad supporters.

The match became still faster, but more brutal. Volkov and Vulchanov, the Bulgarian Beaters, were whacking the Bludgers as fiercely as possible at the Irish Chasers, and were starting to prevent them from using some of their best moves; twice they were forced to scatter, and then, finally, Ivanova managed to break through their ranks; dodge the Keeper, Ryan; and score Bulgaria's first goal.

"Fingers in your ears!" bellowed Mr. Weasley as the veela started to dance in celebration. I ignored him and continued to watch the game and in a matter of seconds the veela had stopped dancing, and Bulgaria was again in possession of the Quaffle.

"Dimitrov! Levski! Dimitrov! Ivanova - oh I say!" roared Bagman.

One hundred thousand wizards gasped as the two Seekers, Krum and Lynch, plummeted through the center of the Chasers. I followed their descent through my Omnioculars, squinting to see where the Snitch was -

"They're going to crash!" screamed Hermione next to me.

She was half right - at the very last second, Viktor Krum pulled out of the dive and spiraled off. Lynch, however, hit the ground with a dull thud that could be heard throughout the stadium. A huge groan rose from the Irish seats.

"Fool!" moaned Mr. Weasley. "Krum was feinting!"

"It's time-out!" yelled Bagman's voice, "as trained mediwizards hurry onto the field to examine Aidan Lynch!"

"He'll be okay, he only got ploughed!" Charlie said reassuringly to Ginny, who was hanging over the side of the box, looking horror-struck. "Which is what Krum was after, of course..."

I hastily pressed the replay and play-by-play buttons on my Omnioculars, twiddled the speed dial, and put them back up to my eyes.

I watched as Krum and Lynch dived again in slow motion. _**WRONSKI DEFENSIVE FEINT - DANGEROUS SEEKER DIVERSION **_read the shining purple lettering across the lenses. I saw Krum's face contorted with concentration as he pulled out of the dive just in time, while Lynch was flattened, and I understood - Krum hadn't seen the Snitch at all, he was just making Lynch copy him. I had never seen anyone fly like that; Krum hardly looked as though he was using a broomstick at all; he moved so easily through the air that he looked unsupported and weightless. I turned my Omnioculars back to normal and focused them on Krum. He was now circling high above Lynch, who was being revived by mediwizards with cups of potion. Focusing still more closely upon Krum's face, I saw his dark eyes darting all over the ground a hundred feet below. He was using the time while Lynch was revived to look for the Snitch without interference.

Lynch got to his feet at last, to loud cheers from the green-clad supporters, mounted his Firebolt, and kicked back off into the air. His revival seemed to give Ireland new heart. When Mostafa blew his whistle again, the Chasers moved into action with a skill unrivaled by anything I had seen so far.

After fifteen more fast and furious minutes, Ireland had pulled ahead by ten more goals. They were now leading by one hundred and thirty points to ten, and the game was starting to get dirtier.

As Mullet shot toward the goal posts yet again, clutching the Quaffle tightly under her arm, the Bulgarian Keeper, Zograf, flew out to meet her. Whatever happened was over so quickly I didn't catch it, but a scream of rage from the Irish crowd, and Mostafa's long, shrill whistle blast, told me it had been a foul.

"And Mostafa takes the Bulgarian Keeper to task for cobbing - excessive use of elbows!" Bagman informed the roaring spectators. "And - yes, it's a penalty to Ireland!"

The leprechauns, who had risen angrily into the air like a swarm of glittering hornets when Mullet had been fouled, now darted together to form the words _"HA, HA, HA!" _

The veela on the other side of the field leapt to their feet, tossed their hair angrily, and started to dance again.

As one, the Weasley boys and Harry stuffed their fingers into their ears, I was soon tugging on Harry's arm. He turned to look at me, and I pulled his fingers impatiently out of his ears.

"Look at the referee!" I said, laughing.

We looked down at the field. Hassan Mostafa had landed right in front of the dancing veela, and was acting very oddly indeed. He was flexing his muscles and smoothing his mustache excitedly.

"Now, we can't have that!" said Ludo Bagman, though he sounded highly amused. "Somebody slap the referee!"

A mediwizard came tearing across the field, his fingers stuffed into his own ears, and kicked Mostafa hard in the shins. Mostafa seemed to come to himself; watching through the Omnioculars again, I saw that he looked exceptionally embarrassed and had started shouting at the veela, who had stopped dancing and were looking mutinous.

"And unless I'm much mistaken, Mostafa is actually attempting to send off the Bulgarian team mascots!" said Bagman's voice. "Now there's something we haven't seen before...Oh this could turn nasty..."

It did: The Bulgarian Beaters, Volkov and Vulchanov, landed on either side of Mostafa and began arguing furiously with him, gesticulating toward the leprechauns, who had now gleefully formed the words "_HEE, HEE, HEE_." Mostafa was not impressed by the Bulgarians' arguments, however; he was jabbing his finger into the air, clearly telling them to get flying again, and when they refused, he gave two short blasts on his whistle.

"Two penalties for Ireland!" shouted Bagman, and the Bulgarian crowd howled with anger. "And Volkov and Vulchanov had better get back on those brooms... yes... there they go... and Troy takes the Quaffle..."

Play now reached a level of ferocity beyond anything we had yet seen. The Beaters on both sides were acting without mercy: Volkov and Vulchanov in particular seemed not to care whether their clubs made contact with Bludger or human as they swung them violently through the air. Dimitrov shot straight at Moran, who had the Quaffle, nearly knocking her off her broom.

"Foul!" roared the Irish supporters as one, all standing up in a great wave of green.

"Foul!" echoed Ludo Bagman's magically magnified voice. "Dimitrov skins Moran - deliberately flying to collide there - and it's got to be another penalty - yes, there's the whistle!"

The leprechauns had risen into the air again, and this time, they formed a giant hand, which was making a very rude sign indeed at the veela across the field. I burst out laughing. At this, the veela lost control. Instead of dancing, they launched themselves across the field and began throwing what seemed to be handfuls of fire at the leprechauns. Watching through my Omnioculars, I saw that they didn't look remotely beautiful now. On the contrary, their faces were elongating into sharp, cruel-beaked bird heads, and long, scaly wings were bursting from their shoulders -

"And that, boys," yelled Mr. Weasley over the tumult of the crowd below, "is why you should never go for looks alone!"

Ministry wizards were flooding onto the field to separate the veela and the leprechauns, but with little success; meanwhile, the pitched battle below was nothing to the one taking place above. I turned this way and that, staring through my Omnioculars, as the Quaffie changed hands with the speed of a bullet.

"Levski - Dimitrov - Moran - Troy - Mullet - Ivanova - Moran again - Moran - MORAN SCORES!"

But the cheers of the Irish supporters were barely heard over the shrieks of the veela, the blasts now issuing from the Ministry members' wands, and the furious roars of the Bulgarians. The game recommenced immediately; now Levski had the Quaffle, now Dimitrov -

The Irish Beater Quigley swung heavily at a passing Bludger, and hit it as hard as possible toward Krum, who did not duck quickly enough. It hit him full in the face.

There was a deafening groan from the crowd; Krum's nose looked broken, there was blood everywhere, but Hassan Mostafa didn't blow his whistle. He had become distracted, and I couldn't blame him; one of the veela had thrown a handful of fire and set his broom tail alight.

I wanted someone to realize that Krum was injured; even though I was supporting Ireland, Krum was the most exciting player on the field. Ron and Harry obviously felt the same.

"Time-out! Ah, come on, he can't play like that, look at him -"

"Look at Lynch!" Harry yelled.

For the Irish Seeker had suddenly gone into a dive, and I was quite sure that this was no Wronski Feint; this was the real thing...

"He's seen the Snitch!" I shouted. "He's seen it! Look at him go!"

Half the crowd seemed to have realized what was happening; the Irish supporters rose in another great wave of green, screaming their Seeker on... but Krum was on his tail. How he could see where he was going, I had no idea; there were flecks of blood flying through the air behind him, but he was drawing level with Lynch now as the pair of them hurtled toward the ground again -

"They're going to crash!" shrieked Hermione.

"They're not!" roared Ron.

"Lynch is!" yelled Harry.

And he was right - for the second time, Lynch hit the ground with tremendous force and was immediately stampeded by a horde of angry veela.

"The Snitch, where's the Snitch?" bellowed Charlie, along the row.

"He's got it - Krum's got it - it's all over!" shouted Harry.


	4. The Death Eaters

****(ANYTHING YOU RECOGNIZE BELONGS TO J.K. ROWLING)****

* * *

"Get up! Ron - Jack - Harry - come on now, get up, this is urgent!"

I sat up quickly and the top of my head hit canvas.

"'S' matter?" I said.

Dimly, I could tell that something was wrong. The noises in the campsite had changed. The singing had stopped. I could hear screams, and the sound of people running. I slipped down from the bunk and reached for my clothes, but Mr. Weasley, who had pulled on his jeans over his own pajamas, said, "No time, Jack - just grab a jacket and get outside - quickly!"

I did as I was told and hurried out of the tent, Ron and Harry at my heels. They were wearing pajamas though, I was just wearing my old sweats I slept in.

By the light of the few fires that were still burning, I could see people running away into the woods, fleeing from something that was moving across the field toward us, something that was emitting odd flashes of light and noises like gunfire. Loud jeering, roars of laughter, and drunken yells were drifting toward us; then came a burst of strong green light, which illuminated the scene.

A crowd of wizards, tightly packed and moving together with wands pointing straight upward, was marching slowly across the field. I squinted at them... They didn't seem to have faces... Then I realized that their heads were hoods and their faces masked. High above us, floating along in midair, four struggling figures were being contorted into grotesque shapes. It was as though the masked wizards on the ground were puppeteers, and the people above them were marionettes operated by invisible strings that rose from the wands into the air. Two of the figures were very small.

More wizards were joining the marching group, laughing and pointing up at the floating bodies. Tents crumpled and fell as the marching crowd swelled. Once or twice I saw one of the marchers blast a tent out of his way with his wand. Several caught fire. The screaming grew louder.

The floating people were suddenly illuminated as they passed over a burning tent and I recognized one of them: Mr. Roberts, the campsite manager. The other three looked as though they might be his wife and children. One of the marchers below flipped Mrs. Roberts upside down with his wand; her nightdress fell down to reveal voluminous drawers and she struggled to cover herself up as the crowd below her screeched and hooted with glee.

"That's sick," Ron muttered, watching the smallest Muggle child, who had begun to spin like a top, sixty feet above the ground, his head flopping limply from side to side. "That is really sick..."

Hermione and Ginny came hurrying toward us, pulling coats over their nightdresses, with Mr. Weasley right behind them. At the same moment, Bill, Charlie, and Percy emerged from the boys' tent, fully dressed, with their sleeves rolled up and their wands out.

"We're going to help the Ministry!" Mr. Weasley shouted over all the noise, rolling up his own sleeves. "You lot - get into the woods, and stick together. I'll come and fetch you when we've sorted this out!"

Bill, Charlie, and Percy were already sprinting away toward the oncoming marchers; Mr. Weasley tore after them. Ministry wizards were dashing from every direction toward the source of the trouble. The crowd beneath the Roberts family was coming ever closer.

"C'mon," said Fred, grabbing Ginny's hand and starting to pull her toward the wood. Me, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and George followed. We all looked back as they reached the trees. The crowd beneath the Roberts family was larger than ever; they could see the Ministry wizards trying to get through it to the hooded wizards in the center, but they were having great difficulty. It looked as though they were scared to perform any spell that might make the Roberts family fall.

I spun around, sprinting back towards the fray. I shoved past the Ministry Wizards, and, once I was in a clear space, I shifted.

I let out a roar as my paws hit solid ground, jumping over the heads of many wizards. People started screaming at the sight of me, and I ignored them, running straight at the masked men.

The one person stopped what he was doing - making the kid spin - and let out a yell before disapparating. I leapt forward, shifting back and catching the kid before he fell.

I kept him in my arms as I snarled at the other masked people, who all seemed genuinely alarmed. This gave the Ministry wizards - including Mr. Weasley - to get through and catch the Roberts family before they fell after the men had dissaperated. I set the boy gently on the ground and sped off in the direction of the woods; I needed to make sure my friends were safe.

I ran through the woods, noticing a faint glow up ahead as I followed their scents.

"Ron!" I called. "Harry! Hermione!" I stopped in a clearing where they were. "I've been looking for you!"

"Glad you're safe!" said Ron, relieved.

"You nearly gave us heart attacks!" Harry agreed.

"Nice to know I'm loved." I muttered as Hermione gave me a hug. "So, what are we doing? Just waiting?" Then I noticed something. "Harry, where's your wand?" I asked, looking at him in the dim light - though to me, it was clear as anything: werewolf senses.

"Lost it." he said.

"Ugh - you can be so -" I stopped at the snap of a twig. I noticed a silhouette of a figure. "Who's there?" I said loudly.

"MORSMORDE!" The stranger yelled, pointing a wand up into the air. I gasped. A colossal skull, compromised of what looked like emerald stars and a serpent protruding from it's mouth like a tongue.

"Harry, come on, move!" I helped Hermione pull Harry away from there.

"What's the matter?" Harry asked. I resulted to picking him up and carrying him. Ignorant prat.

"It's the dark mark Harry!" I said seriously. "Voldemort's sign!"

We started across the clearing, but before we had taken a few steps, a series of popping noises announced the arrival of about twenty wizards, appearing out of thin air, surrounding us.

Instinctively, I dropped Harry to the ground, then grabbed Ron and Hermione's collars and pulled them to the ground.

"STUPEFY!" Twenty voices roared, and a flash of red light went over our heads. The bastards! They tried to stun us?

"Stop!" Mr. Weasley's voice rang out. "STOP! That's my son!"

I jumped to my feet as Mr. Weasley strode over to us, looking worried and angry at the Ministry Wizards.

"Ron - Harry - Jack - Hermione - are you all right?" He asked us in a shaky voice.

"Out of the way, Arthur," said a cold, curt voice.

It was Mr. Crouch. He and the other Ministry wizards were closing in on us. Mr. Crouch's face was taunt with rage.

"Which of you did it?" His eyes landed on me. "I bet it was you."

"Oh yeah, blame the naked one." I smirked at him. I was only wearing my joggers, and my feet were starting to go numb.

"Yes, always the werewolf." he said spitefully. I growled, trying to calm myself down.

I was pissed; predjudist prats like that were the reason my Dad had trouble in this world. The reason I couldn't walk around Diagon Alley without being pointed at and shunned.

I spun round. "I'll see you guys in the morning." I snapped, breathing deeply. "Don't come looking for me. Oh, and for the record; I'm not a werewolf, I'm a Lycan."

I leapt into the empty air, my body exploding as I transformed. I hit the ground with a thud and took off into the dark night.


	5. The Hogwarts Express

****(ANYTHING YOU RECOGNIZE BELONGS TO J.K. ROWLING)****

* * *

The Hogwarts Express, a gleaming scarlet steam engine, was already there, clouds of steam billowing from it, through which the many Hogwarts students and parents on the platform appeared like dark ghosts. Pigwidgeon became noisier than ever in response to the hooting of many owls through the mist. Me, Harry, Ron, and Hermione set off to find seats, and were soon stowing our luggage in a compartment halfway along the train. Then we hopped back down onto the platform to say good-bye to Mrs. Weasley, Bill and Charlie.

"I might be seeing you all sooner than you think," said Charlie, grinning, as he hugged Ginny good-bye.

"Why?" said Fred keenly.

"You'll see," said Charlie. "Just don't tell Percy I mentioned it... it's 'classified information, until such time as the Ministry sees fit to release it,' after all."

"Yeah, I sort of wish I were back at Hogwarts this year," said Bill, hands in his pockets, looking almost wistfully at the train.

"Why?" said George impatiently.

"You're going to have an interesting year," said Bill, his eyes twinkling. "I might even get time off to come and watch a bit of it."

"A bit of what?" said Ron.

But at that moment, the whistle blew, and Mrs. Weasley chivvied them toward the train doors.

"Thanks for having us to stay, Mrs. Weasley," said Hermione as weclimbed on board, closed the door, and leaned out of the window to talk to her.

"Yeah, thanks for everything, Mrs. Weasley," said Harry and me in sync, and I nudged him for doing so.

"Oh it was my pleasure, dears," said Mrs. Weasley. "I'd invite you for Christmas, but... well, I expect you're all going to want to stay at Hogwarts, what with... one thing and another."

"Mum!" said Ron irritably. "What d'you three know that we don't?"

"You'll find out this evening, I expect," said Mrs. Weasley, smiling. "It's going to be very exciting - mind you, I'm very glad they've changed the rules -"

"What rules?" said me, Harry, Ron, Fred, and George together.

"I'm sure Professor Dumbledore will tell you... Now, behave, won't you? Won't you, Fred? And you, George?"

The pistons hissed loudly and the train began to move.

"Tell us what's happening at Hogwarts!" Fred bellowed out of the window as Mrs. Weasley, Bill, and Charlie sped away from them. "What rules are they changing?"

But Mrs. Weasley only smiled and waved. Before the train had rounded the corner, she, Bill, and Charlie had Disapparated.

The four of us went back to our compartment. The thick rain splattering the windows made it very difficult to see out of them. Ron undid his trunk, pulled out his maroon dress robes, and flung them over Pigwidgeon's cage to muffle his hooting.

"Bagman wanted to tell us what's happening at Hogwarts," he said grumpily, sitting down next to Harry. "At the World Cup, remember? But my own mother won't say. Wonder what -"

"Shh!" Hermione whispered suddenly, pressing her finger to her lips and pointing toward the compartment next to theirs. I listened, and heard a familiar drawling voice drifting in through the open door.

"... Father actually considered sending me to Durmstrang rather than Hogwarts, you know. He knows the headmaster, you see. Well, you know his opinion of Dumbledore - the man's such a Mudblood-lover - and Durmstrang doesn't admit that sort of riffraff. But Mother didn't like the idea of me going to school so far away. Father says Durmstrang takes a far more sensible line than Hogwarts about the Dark Arts. Durmstrang students actually learn them, not just the defense rubbish we do..."

Hermione got up, tiptoed to the compartment door, and slid it shut, blocking out Malfoy's voice.

"So he thinks Durmstrang would have suited him, does he?" she said angrily. "I wish he had gone, then we wouldn't have to put up with him."

"Durmstrang's another wizarding school?" said Harry.

"Yes," said Hermione sniffily, "and it's got a horrible reputation. According to An Appraisal of Magical Education in Europe, it puts a lot of emphasis on the Dark Arts."

"I think I've heard of it," I said vaguely. "Where is it? What country?"

"Well, nobody knows, do they?" said Hermione, raising her eyebrows.

"Er - why not?" said Harry.

"There's traditionally been a lot of rivalry between all the magic schools. Durmstrang and Beauxbatons like to conceal their whereabouts so nobody can steal their secrets," said Hermione matter-of-factly.

"Come off it," said Ron, starting to laugh. "Durmstrang's got to be about the same size as Hogwarts - how are you going to hide a great big castle?"

"But Hogwarts is hidden," said Hermione. "Everyone knows that... well, everyone who's read Hogwarts, A History, anyway."

"Just you, then," I said. "So how d'you hide a place like Hogwarts?"

"It's bewitched," said Hermione. "If a Muggle looks at it, all they see is a moldering old ruin with a sign over the entrance saying DANGER, DO NOT ENTER, UNSAFE."

"So Durmstrang'll just look like a ruin to an outsider too?"

"Maybe," said Hermione, shrugging, "or it might have Muggle-repelling charms on it, like the World Cup stadium. And to keep foreign wizards from finding it, they'll have made it Unplottable -"

"Come again?"

"Well, you can enchant a building so it's impossible to plot on a map, can't you?"

"Er... if you say so," said Harry.

"But I think Durmstrang must be somewhere in the far north," said Hermione thoughtfully. "Somewhere very cold, because they've got fur capes as part of their uniforms."

"Ah, think of the possibilities," said Ron dreamily. "It would've been so easy to push Malfoy off a glacier and make it look like an accident... Shame his mother likes him..."

The rain became heavier and heavier as the train moved farther north. The sky was so dark and the windows so steamy that the lanterns were lit by midday. The lunch trolley came rattling along the corridor, and Harry bought a large stack of Cauldron Cakes for us to share.

Several of our friends looked in on them as the afternoon progressed, including Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas, and Neville Longbottom. Seamus was still wearing his Ireland rosette. Some of its magic seemed to be wearing off now; it was still squeaking "Troy - Mullet - Moran!" but in a very feeble and exhausted sort of way which irritated me after a full four seconds. After half an hour or so, Hermione, growing tired of the endless Quidditch talk, buried herself once more in The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 4, and started trying to learn a Summoning Charm.

Neville listened jealously to our conversation as we relived the Cup match.

"Gran didn't want to go," he said miserably. "Wouldn't buy tickets. It sounded amazing though."

"It was," said Ron. "Look at this, Neville..."

He rummaged in his trunk up in the luggage rack and pulled out the miniature figure of Viktor Krum.

"Oh wow," said Neville enviously as Ron tipped Krum onto his pudgy hand.

"We saw him right up close, as well," said Ron. "We were in the Top Box -"

"For the first and last time in your life, Weasley."

Draco Malfoy had appeared in the doorway. Behind him stood Crabbe and Goyle, his enormous, thuggish cronies, both of whom appeared to have grown at least a foot during the summer. Evidently they had overheard the conversation through the compartment door, which Dean and Seamus had left ajar.

"Don't remember asking you to join us, Malfoy," said Harry coolly.

"Weasley... what is that?" said Malfoy, pointing at Pigwidgeon's cage. A sleeve of Ron's dress robes was dangling from it, swaying with the motion of the train, the moldy lace cuff very obvious.

Ron made to stuff the robes out of sight, but Malfoy was too quick for him; he seized the sleeve and pulled.

"Look at this!" said Malfoy in ecstasy, holding up Ron's robes and showing Crabbe and Goyle, "Weasley, you weren't thinking of wearing these, were you? I mean - they were very fashionable in about eighteen ninety..."

"Eat dung, Malfoy!" said Ron, the same color as the dress robes as he snatched them back out of Malfoy's grip. Malfoy howled with derisive laughter; Crabbe and Goyle guffawed stupidly.

"So...going to enter, Weasley? Going to try and bring a bit of glory to the family name? There's money involved as well, you know... you'd be able to afford some decent robes if you won..."

I bit down hard on my knuckle, trying not to let my anger get the better of me. Hermione was giving me concerned looks out of the corner of her eye.

"What are you talking about?" snapped Ron.

"Are you going to enter?" Malfoy repeated. "I suppose you will, Potter? You never miss a chance to show off, do you? What about you, Lupin?"

"Either explain what you're on about or go away, Malfoy," said Hermione testily, over the top of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 4."

A gleeful smile spread across Malfoy's pale face

"Don't tell me you don't know?" he said delightedly. "You've got a father and brother at the Ministry and you don't even know? My God, my father told me about it ages ago... heard it from Cornelius Fudge. But then, Father's always associated with the top people at the Ministry... Maybe your father's too junior to know about it, Weasley... yes... they probably don't talk about important stuff in front of him..."

Laughing once more, Malfoy beckoned to Crabbe and Goyle, and the three of them disappeared.

Ron got to his feet and slammed the sliding compartment door so hard behind them that the glass shattered.

"Ron!" said Hermione reproachfully, and she pulled out her wand, muttered "Reparo!" and the glass shards flew back into a single pane and back into the door.

"Well... making it look like he knows everything and we don't..." Ron snarled. I took my hand out from my teeth and watched with a glare as the broken skin knitted itself painlessly back together, becoming a faint pink scratch before disapearing all together. "'Father's always associated with the top people at the Ministry'... Dad could've got a promotion any time... he just likes it where he is..."

"Of course he does," said Hermione quietly. "Don't let Malfoy get to you, Ron -"

"Him! Get to me! As if!" said Ron, picking up one of the remaining Cauldron Cakes and squashing it into a pulp.

Ron's bad mood continued for the rest of the journey. He didn't talk much as we changed into our school robes, and was still glowering when the Hogwarts Express slowed down at last and finally stopped in the pitch-darkness of Hogsmeade station.

As the train doors opened, there was a rumble of thunder overhead. Hermione bundled up Crookshanks in her cloak and Ron left his dress robes over Pigwidgeon as we left the train, heads bent and eyes narrowed against the downpour. The rain was now coming down so thick and fast that it was as though buckets of ice-cold water were being emptied repeatedly over our heads.

"Hi, Hagrid!" Harry yelled, to the gigantic silhouette at the far end of the platform.

"All righ', Harry?" Hagrid bellowed back, waving. "See yeh at the feast if we don' drown!"

First years traditionally reached Hogwarts Castle by sailing across the lake with Hagrid.

"Oooh, I wouldn't fancy crossing the lake in this weather," said Hermione fervently, shivering as we inched slowly along the dark platform with the rest of the crowd. A carriages stood waiting for us outside the station, each one was pulled by a skeletal winged horse. They'd always creeped me out, but no one else seemed to care about them. Well, either that or they were invisible to everyone but me.

Unlikely, but not impossible.

Me, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville climbed gratefully into one of them, the door shut with a snap, and a few moments later, with a great lurch, the long procession of carriages were rumbling and splashing their way up the track toward the Castle.

It occurred to me - then and there - that the reason people I knew - and didn't know - were acting oddly edgy around me, was because they knew I was a wolf.

Fucking brilliant.


	6. The Tornament

****(ANYTHING YOU RECOGNIZE BELONGS TO J.K. ROWLING)****

* * *

Leaning against the window, I could see Hogwarts coming nearer, its many lighted windows blurred and shimmering behind the thick curtain of rain. Lightning flashed across the sky as their carriage came to a halt before the great oak front doors, which stood at the top of a flight of stone steps. People who had occupied the carriages in front were already hurrying up the stone steps into the castle. Me, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville jumped down from our carriage and dashed up the steps too, looking up only when we were safely inside the cavernous, torch-lit entrance hall, with its magnificent marble staircase.

"Blimey," said Ron, shaking his head and sending water everywhere, "if that keeps up the lake's going to overflow. I'm soak - ARRGH!"

A large, red, water-filled balloon had dropped from out of the ceiling onto Ron's head and exploded. Drenched and sputtering, Ron staggered sideways into Harry, just as a second water bomb dropped - narrowly missing me, it burst at mine and Harry's feet, sending a wave of cold water over my hi-tops and into my socks. People all around us shrieked and started pushing one another in their efforts to get out of the line of fire. I looked up and saw, floating twenty feet above us, Peeves the Poltergeist, a little man in a bell-covered hat and orange bow tie, his wide, malicious face contorted with concentration as he took aim again.

"PEEVES!" yelled an angry voice. "Peeves, come down here at ONCE!"

Professor McGonagall had come dashing out of the Great Hall; she skidded on the wet floor and grabbed Hermione around the neck to stop herself from falling.

"Ouch - sorry, Miss Granger -"

"That's all right, Professor!" Hermione gasped, massaging her throat.

"Peeves, get down here NOW!" barked Professor McGonagall, straightening her pointed hat and glaring upward through her square-rimmed spectacles.

"Not doing nothing!" cackled Peeves, lobbing a water bomb at several fifth-year girls, who screamed and dived into the Great Hall. I laughed. "Already wet, aren't they? Little squirts! Wheeeeeeeeee!" And he aimed another bomb at a group of second years who had just arrived.

"Peeves!" I called, holding my hand out. Peeves grinned and chucked a balloon to me, which I caught, and threw directly into a group of fourth year Slytherins. Peeves cackled and passed me another one, which I aimed into a group of Slytherin seventh years.

"Mr. Lupin!" McGonagall scolded, and I dropped the balloon, smiling innocently - well, as innocently as Icould get.

"I shall call the headmaster!" shouted Professor McGonagall. "I'm warning you, Peeves -"

Peeves stuck out his tongue, threw the last of his water bombs into the air, and zoomed off up the marble staircase, cackling insanely.

"Well, move along, then!" said Professor McGonagall sharply to the bedraggled crowd. "Into the Great Hall, come on!"

The four of us slipped and slid across the entrance hall and through the double doors on the right, Ron muttering furiously under his breath as he pushed his sopping hair off his face.

The Great Hall looked its usual splendid self, decorated for the start-of-term feast. Golden plates and goblets gleamed by the light of hundreds and hundreds of candles, floating over the tables in midair. The four long House tables were packed with chattering students; at the top of the Hall, the staff sat along one side of a fifth table, facing their pupils. It was much warmer in here. I led my three friends past the Slytherins, the Ravenclaws, and the Hufflepuffs, and sat down with the rest of the Gryffindors at the far side of the Hall, next to Nearly Headless Nick, who was dressed tonight in his usual doublet, but with a particularly large ruff, which served the dual purpose of looking extra-festive, and insuring that his head didn't wobble too much on his partially severed neck.

"Good evening," he said, beaming at us.

"Says who?" said Harry, taking off his sneakers and emptying them of water. "Hope they hurry up with the Sorting. I'm starving."

"Hiya, Harry!"

It was Colin Creevey, a third year and Harry's one man fan club.

"Hi, Colin," said Harry warily.

"Harry, guess what? Guess what, Harry? My brother's starting! My brother Dennis!"

"Er - good," said Harry.

"He's really excited!" said Colin, practically bouncing up and down in his seat. "I just hope he's in Gryffindor! Keep your fingers crossed, eh, Harry?"

"Er - yeah, all right," said Harry. He turned back to me, Hermione, Ron, and Nearly Headless Nick. "Brothers and sisters usually go in the same Houses, don't they?" he said. He was probably judging by the Weasleys, all seven of whom had been put into Gryffindor.

"Oh no, not necessarily," said Hermione. "Parvati Patil's twin's in Ravenclaw, and they're identical. You'd think they'd be together, wouldn't you?"

I looked up at the staff table. There seemed to be rather more empty seats there than usual. Hagrid, of course, was still fighting his way across the lake with the first years; Professor McGonagall was presumably supervising the drying of the entrance hall floor, but there was another empty chair too, and I couldn't think who else was missing.

"Where's the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?" said Hermione, who was also looking up at the teachers.

As far as I'd heard, Hogwarts had never yet had a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who had lasted more than three terms. Everyone's favorite by far had been Professor Lupin my dad, Moony, who had resigned last year. I looked up and down the staff table. There was definitely no new face there.

"Maybe they couldn't get anyone!" said Hermione, looking anxious.

I scanned the table more carefully. Tiny little Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was sitting on a large pile of cushions beside Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher, whose hat was askew over her flyaway gray hair. She was talking to Professor Sinistra of the Astronomy department. On Professor Sinistra's other side was Snape - my least favorite person at Hogwarts. My loathing of Snape was matched only by Snape's hatred of me, a hatred which had, if possible, intensified last year, when we had helped Sirius escape right under Snape's overlarge nose.

On Snape's other side was an empty seat, which I guessed was Professor McGonagall's. Next to it, and in the very center of the table, sat Professor Dumbledore. The tips of Dumbledore's long, thin fingers were together and he was resting his chin upon them, staring up at the ceiling through his half-moon spectacles as though lost in thought. I saw Harry glance up at the ceiling too. It was enchanted to look like the sky outside, and I had never seen it look this stormy. Black and purple clouds were swirling across it, and as another thunderclap sounded outside, a fork of lightning flashed across it and I flinched.

"Oh hurry up," Ron moaned, beside me, "I could eat a hippogriff."

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than the doors of the Great Hall opened and silence fell. Professor McGonagall was leading a long line of first years up to the top of the Hall. If we were wet, it was nothing to how these first years looked. They appeared to have swum across the lake, all of them were shivering with a combination of cold and nerves as they filed along the staff table and came to a halt in a line facing the rest of the school - all of them except the smallest of the lot, a boy with mousy hair, who was wrapped in what I recognized as Hagrid's moleskin overcoat. The coat was so big for him that it hooked as though he were draped in a furry black circus tent. His small face protruded from over the collar, looking almost painfully excited. When he had lined up with his terrified-looking peers, he caught Colin Creevey's eye, gave a double thumbs-up, and mouthed, _I fell in the lake_! He looked positively delighted about it.

Professor McGonagall now placed a three-legged stool on the ground before the first years and, on top of it, an extremely old, dirty patched wizard's hat. The first years stared at it. So did everyone else. For a moment, there was silence. Then a long tear near the brim opened wide like a mouth, and the hat broke into song:

_A thousand years or more ago,_

_When I was newly sewn,_

_There lived four wizards of renown,_

_Whose names are still well known:_

_Bold Gryffindor, from wild moor,_

_Fair Ravenclaw, from glen,_

_Sweet Hufflepuff, from valley broad,_

_Shrewd Slytherin, from fin._

_They shared a wish, a hope, a dream,_

_They hatched a daring plan_

_To educate young sorcerers_

_Thus Hogwarts School began._

_Now each of these four founders_

_Formed their own house, for each_

_Did value different virtues_

_In the ones they had to teach._

_By Gryffindor, the bravest were_

_Prized far beyond the rest;_

_For Ravenclaw, the cleverest_

_Would always be the best;_

_For Hufflepuff, hard workers were_

_Most worthy of admission;_

_And power-hungry Slytherin_

_Loved those of great ambition._

_While still alive they did divide_

_Their favorites from the throng,_

_Yet how to pick the worthy ones_

_When they were dead and gone?_

_Twas Gryffindor who found the way,_

_He whipped me off his head_

_The founders put some brains in me_

_So I could choose instead!_

_Now slip me snug about your ears,_

_I've never yet been wrong,_

_I'll have a look inside your mind_

_And tell where you belong!_

The Great Hall rang with applause as the Sorting Hat finished.

"That's not the song it sang when it Sorted us," said Harry, clapping along with everyone else.

"Sings a different one every year," said Ron. "It's got to be a pretty boring life, hasn't it, being a hat? I suppose it spends all year making up the next one."

Professor McGonagall was now unrolling a large scroll of parchment.

"When I call out your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool," she told the first years. "When the hat announces your House, you will go and sit at the appropriate table.

"Ackerley, Stewart!"

A boy walked forward, visibly trembling from head to foot, picked up the Sorting Hat, put it on, and sat down on the stool.

"RAVENCLAW!" shouted the hat.

Stewart Ackerley took off the hat and hurried into a seat at the Ravenclaw table, where everyone was applauding him.

"Baddock, Malcolm!"

"SLYTHERIN!"

The table on the other side of the hall erupted with cheers; I could see Malfoy clapping as Baddock joined the Slytherins. Fred and George hissed Malcolm Baddock as he sat down.

"Branstone, Eleanor!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Cauldwell, Owen!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Creevey, Dennis!"

Tiny Dennis Creevey staggered forward, tripping over Hagrid's moleskin, just as Hagrid himself sidled into the Hall through a door behind the teachers' table. About twice as tall as a normal man, and at least three times as broad, Hagrid, with his long, wild, tangled black hair and beard, looked slightly alarming - a misleading impression, for me, Harry, Ron, and Hermione knew Hagrid to possess a very kind nature. He winked at us as he sat down at the end of the staff table and watched Dennis Creevey putting on the Sorting Hat.

"GRYFFINDOR!" the hat shouted.

Hagrid clapped along with the Gryffindors as Dennis Creevey, beaming widely, took off the hat, placed it back on the stool, and hurried over to join his brother.

"Colin, I fell in!" he said shrilly, throwing himself into an empty seat. "It was brilliant! And something in the water grabbed me and pushed me back in the boat!"

"Cool!" said Colin, just as excitedly. "It was probably the giant squid, Dennis!"

"Wow!" said Dennis, as though nobody in their wildest dreams could hope for more than being thrown into a storm-tossed, fathoms-deep lake, and pushed out of it again by a giant sea monster.

"Dennis! Dennis! See that boy down there? The one with the black hair and wearing the leather jacket? He's a Werewolf Dennis! And the one with the black hair and glasses? See him? Know who he is, Dennis?"

Harry looked away, staring very hard at the Sorting Hat, now Sorting Emma Dobbs. I grinned and looked over at Colin and Dennis, giving them a wave.

The Sorting continued; boys and girls with varying degrees of fright on their faces moving one by one to the three-legged stool, the line dwindling slowly as Professor McGonagall passed the L's.

"Oh hurry up," Ron moaned, massaging his stomach.

"Now, Ron, the Sorting's much more important than food," said Nearly Headless Nick as "Madley, Laura!" became a Hufflepuff.

"Course it is, if you're dead," snapped Ron.

"I do hope this year's batch of Gryffindors are up to scratch," said Nearly Headless Nick, applauding as "McDonald, Natalie!" joined the Gryffindor table. "We don't want to break our winning streak, do we?"

"Pritchard, Graham!"

"SLYTHERIN!"

"Quirke, Orla!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

And finally, with "Whitby, Kevin!" ("HUFFLEPUFF!"), the Sorting ended. Professor McGonagall picked up the hat and the stool and carried them away.

"About time," said Ron, seizing his knife and fork and looking expectantly at his golden plate.

Professor Dumbledore had gotten to his feet. He was smiling around at the students, his arms opened wide in welcome.

"I have only two words to say to you," he told us, his deep voice echoing around the Hall. "Tuck in."

"Hear, hear!" said Harry and Ron loudly as the empty dishes filled magically before our eyes.

Nearly Headless Nick watched mournfully as me, Harry, Ron, and Hermione loaded our own plates.

"Aaah, 'at's be'er," said Ron, with his mouth full of mashed potato.

"You're lucky there's a feast at all tonight, you know," said Nearly Headless Nick. "There was trouble in the kitchens earlier."

"Why? Wha' 'appened?" said Harry, through a sizable chunk of steak.

"Peeves, of course," said Nearly Headless Nick, shaking his head, which wobbled dangerously. He pulled his ruff a little higher up on his neck. "The usual argument, you know. He wanted to attend the feast - well, it's quite out of the question, you know what he's like, utterly uncivilized, can't see a plate of food without throwing it. We held a ghost's council - the Fat Friar was all for giving him the chance - but most wisely, in my opinion, the Bloody Baron put his foot down."

The Bloody Baron was the Slytherin ghost, a gaunt and silent specter covered in silver bloodstains. He was the only person at Hogwarts who could really control Peeves.

"Yeah, we thought Peeves seemed hacked off about something," I said. "So what did he do in the kitchens?"

"Oh the usual," said Nearly Headless Nick, shrugging. "Wreaked havoc and mayhem. Pots and pans everywhere. Place swimming in soup. Terrified the house-elves out of their wits -"

Clang.

Hermione had knocked over her golden goblet. Pumpkin juice spread steadily over the tablecloth, staining several feet of white linen orange, but Hermione paid no attention.

"There are house-elves here?" she said, staring, horror-struck, at Nearly Headless Nick. "Here at Hogwarts?"

"Certainly," said Nearly Headless Nick, looking surprised at her reaction. "The largest number in any dwelling in Britain, I believe. Over a hundred."

"I've never seen one!" said Hermione.

"Well, they hardly ever leave the kitchen by day, do they?" said Nearly Headless Nick. "They come out at night to do a bit of cleaning... see to the fires and so on... I mean, you're not supposed to see them, are you? That's the mark of a good house-elf, isn't it, that you don't know it's there?"

Hermione stared at him.

"But they get paid?" she said. "They get holidays, don't they? And - and sick leave, and pensions, and everything?"

Nearly Headless Nick chortled so much that his ruff slipped and his head flopped off, dangling on the inch or so of ghostly skin and muscle that still attached it to his neck.

"Sick leave and pensions?" he said, pushing his head back onto his shoulders and securing it once more with his ruff. "House-elves don't want sick leave and pensions!"

Hermione looked down at her hardly touched plate of food, then put her knife and fork down upon it and pushed it away from her.

"Oh c'mon, 'Er-my-knee," said Ron, accidentally spraying Harry with bits of Yorkshire pudding. "Oops - sorry, 'Arry -" He swallowed. "You won't get them sick leave by starving yourself!"

"Slave labor," said Hermione, breathing hard through her nose. "That's what made this dinner. Slave labor."

And she refused to eat another bite.

The rain was still drumming heavily against the high, dark glass. Another clap of thunder shook the windows, and the stormy ceiling flashed, illuminating the golden plates as the remains of the first course vanished and were replaced, instantly, with puddings.

"Treacle tart, Hermione!" said Ron, deliberately wafting its smell toward her. "Spotted dick, look! Chocolate gateau!"

But Hermione gave him a look so reminiscent of Professor McGonagall that he gave up.

When the puddings too had been demolished, and the last crumbs had faded off the plates, leaving them sparkling clean, Dumbledore got to his feet again. The buzz of chatter filling the Hall ceased almost at once, so that only the howling wind and pounding rain could be heard.

"So!" said Dumbledore, smiling around at us all. "Now that we are all fed and watered," ("Hmph!" said Hermione) "I must once more ask for your attention, while I give out a few notices.

"Mr. Filch, the caretaker, has asked me to tell you that the list of objects forbidden inside the castle has this year been extended to include Screaming Yo-yos, Fanged Frisbees, and Ever-Bashing Boomerangs. The full list comprises some four hundred and thirty-seven items, I believe, and can be viewed in Mr. Filch's office, if anybody would like to check it."

The corners of Dumbledore's mouth twitched. He continued, "As ever, I would like to remind you all that the forest on the grounds is out-of-bounds to students, as is the village of Hogsmeade to all below third year.

"It is also my painful duty to inform you that the Inter-House Quidditch Cup will not take place this year."

"What?" I wondered. I looked around at Harry, Fred and George, members of the Quidditch team. They were mouthing soundlessly at Dumbledore, apparently too appalled to speak. Dumbledore went on, "This is due to an event that will be starting in October, and continuing throughout the school year, taking up much of the teachers' time and energy - but I am sure you will all enjoy it immensely. I have great pleasure in announcing that this year at Hogwarts -"

But at that moment, there was a deafening rumble of thunder and the doors of the Great Hall banged open.

A man stood in the doorway, leaning upon a long staff, shrouded in a black traveling cloak. Every head in the Great Hall swivelled toward the stranger, suddenly brightly illuminated by a fork of lightning that flashed across the ceiling. He lowered his hood, shook out a long mane of grizzled, dark gray hair, then began to walk up toward the teachers' table.

A dull clunk echoed through the Hall on his every other step. He reached the end of the top table, turned right, and limped heavily toward Dumbledore. Another flash of lightning crossed the ceiling. Hermione gasped.

The lightning had thrown the man's face into sharp relief, and it was a face unlike any I had ever seen. It looked as though it had been carved out of weathered wood by someone who had only the vaguest idea of what human faces are supposed to look like, and was none too skilled with a chisel. Every inch of skin seemed to be scarred. The mouth looked like a diagonal gash, and a large chunk of the nose was missing. But it was the man's eyes that made him frightening.

One of them was small, dark, and beady. The other was large, round as a coin, and a vivid, electric blue. The blue eye was moving ceaselessly, without blinking, and was rolling up, down, and from side to side, quite independently of the normal eye - and then it rolled right over, pointing into the back of the man's head, so that all I could see was whiteness.

The stranger reached Dumbledore. He stretched out a hand that was as badly scarred as his face, and Dumbledore shook it. I zoned in my hearing:

"I hope you had no trouble in finding us, Alastor," Dumbledore muttered so quiet I was sure I was the only one who could hear them.

The man shook his head unsmilingly and replied in an undertone "Damn reports on the dustbins. Would've been here sooner."

Dumbledore nodded and gestured the man to the empty seat on his right-hand side.

The stranger sat down, shook his mane of dark gray hair out of his face, pulled a plate of sausages toward him, raised it to what was left of his nose, and sniffed it. He then took a small knife out of his pocket, speared a sausage on the end of it, and began to eat. His normal eye was fixed upon the sausages, but the blue eye was still darting restlessly around in its socket, taking in the Hall and the students.

"May I introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?" said Dumbledore brightly into the silence. "Professor Moody."

It was usual for new staff members to be greeted with applause, but none of the staff or students chapped except Dumbledore and Hagrid, who both put their hands together and applauded, but the sound echoed dismally into the silence, and they stopped fairly quickly. Everyone else seemed too transfixed by Moody's bizarre appearance to do more than stare at him. I shrugged, and clapped too. I received many odd looks.

"Moody?" Harry muttered to me. "Mad-Eye Moody? The one Ron's dad went to help this morning?"

"Must be," said Ron in a low, awed voice.

"What happened to him?" Hermione whispered. "What happened to his face?"

"Dunno," Ron whispered back, watching Moody with fascination.

Moody seemed totally indifferent to his less-than-warm welcome. Ignoring the jug of pumpkin juice in front of him, he reached again into his traveling cloak, pulled out a hip flask, and took a long draught from it. As he lifted his arm to drink, his cloak was pulled a few inches from the ground, and I saw, below the table, several inches of carved wooden leg, ending in a clawed foot.

Dumbledore cleared his throat.

"As I was saying," he said, smiling at the sea of students before him, all of whom were still gazing transfixed at Mad-Eye Moody, "we are to have the honor of hosting a very exciting event over the coming months, an event that has not been held for over a century. It is my very great pleasure to inform you that the Triwizard Tournament will be taking place at Hogwarts this year."

"You're JOKING!" I yelled, way over the fact that Fred had just yelled the same thing, but lower. Many heads had turned to me.

The tension that had filled the Hall ever since Moody's arrival suddenly broke. Nearly everyone laughed, and Dumbledore chuckled appreciatively.

"I am not joking, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Lupin" he said, "though now that you mention it, I did hear an excellent one over the summer about a troll, a hag, and a leprechaun who all go into a bar -"

Professor McGonagall cleared her throat loudly.

"Er - but maybe this is not the time... no..." said Dumbledore, "where was I? Ah yes, the Triwizard Tournament... well, some of you will not know what this tournament involves, so I hope those who do know will forgive me for giving a short explanation, and allow their attention to wander freely.

"The Triwizard Tournament was first established some seven hundred years ago as a friendly competition between the three largest European schools of wizardry: Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. A champion was selected to represent each school, and the three champions competed in three magical tasks. The schools took it in turns to host the tournament once every five years, and it was generally agreed to be a most excellent way of establishing ties between young witches and wizards of different nationalities - until, that is, the death toll mounted so high that the tournament was discontinued."

"Death toll?" Hermione whispered, looking alarmed. But her anxiety did not seem to be shared by the majority of students in the Hall; many of them were whispering excitedly to one another.

"There have been several attempts over the centuries to reinstate the tournament," Dumbledore continued, "none of which has been very successful. However, our own departments of International Magical Cooperation and Magical Games and Sports have decided the time is ripe for another attempt. We have worked hard over the summer to ensure that this time, no champion will find himself or herself in mortal danger.

"The heads of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving with their short-listed contenders in October, and the selection of the three champions will take place at Halloween. An impartial judge will decide which students are most worthy to compete for the Triwizard Cup, the glory of their school, and a thousand Galleons personal prize money."

"I'm going for it!" Fred Weasley hissed down the table, his face lit with enthusiasm at the prospect of such glory and riches. He was not the only person who seemed to be visualizing himself as the Hogwarts champion. At every House table, I could see people either gazing raptly at Dumbledore, or else whispering fervently to their neighbors. But then Dumbledore spoke again, and the Hall quieted once more.

"Eager though I know all of you will be to bring the Triwizard Cup to Hogwarts," he said, "the heads of the participating schools, along with the Ministry of Magic, have agreed to impose an age restriction on contenders this year. Only students who are of age - that is to say, seventeen years or older - will be allowed to put forward their names for consideration. This -" Dumbledore raised his voice slightly, for several people had made noises of outrage at these words, and the Weasley twins were suddenly looking furious - "is a measure we feel is necessary, given that the tournament tasks will still be difficult and dangerous, whatever precautions we take, and it is highly unlikely that students below sixth and seventh year will be able to cope with them. I will personally be ensuring that no underage student hoodwinks our impartial judge into making them Hogwarts champion." His light blue eyes twinkled as they flickered over Fred and George's mutinous faces. "I therefore beg you not to waste your time submitting yourself if you are under seventeen.

"The delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving in October and remaining with us for the greater part of this year. I know that you will all extend every courtesy to our foreign guests while they are with us, and will give your whole-hearted support to the Hogwarts champion when he or she is selected. And now, it is late, and I know how important it is to you all to be alert and rested as you enter your lessons tomorrow morning. Bedtime! Chop chop!"

Dumbledore sat down again and turned to talk to Mad-Eye Moody. There was a great scraping and banging as all the students got to their feet and swarmed toward the double doors into the entrance hall.

"They can't do that!" said George Weasley, who had not joined the crowd moving toward the door, but was standing up and glaring at Dumbledore. "We're seventeen in April, why can't we have a shot?"

"They're not stopping me entering," said Fred stubbornly, also scowling at the top table. "The champions'll get to do all sorts of stuff you'd never be allowed to do normally. And a thousand Galleons prize money!"

"Yeah," said Ron, a faraway look on his face. "Yeah, a thousand Galleons..."

"Come on," said Hermione, "we'll be the only ones left here if you don't move."

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, George and I set off for the entrance hall, Fred and George debating the ways in which Dumbledore might stop those who were under seventeen from entering the tournament.

"Who's this impartial judge who's going to decide who the champions are?" said Harry.

"Dunno," said Fred, "but it's them we'll have to fool. I reckon a couple of drops of Aging Potion might do it, George..."

"Dumbledore knows you're not of age, though," said Ron.

"Yeah, but he's not the one who decides who the champion is, is he?" said Fred shrewdly. "Sounds to me like once this judge knows who wants to enter, he'll choose the best from each school and never mind how old they are. Dumbledore's trying to stop us giving our names."

"People have died, though!" said Hermione in a worried voice as we walked through a door concealed behind a tapestry and started up another, narrower staircase.

"Yeah," said Fred airily, "but that was years ago, wasn't it? Anyway, where's the fun without a bit of risk? Hey, Ron, what if we find out how to get 'round Dumbledore? Fancy entering?"

"What d'you reckon?" Ron asked Harry and me. "Be cool to enter, wouldn't it? But I s'pose they might want someone older... Dunno if we've learned enough..."

"I definitely haven't," came Neville's gloomy voice from behind Fred and George. "I expect my gran'd want me to try, though. She's always going on about how I should be upholding the family honor. I'll just have to - oops..."

Neville's foot had sunk right through a step halfway up the staircase. There were many of these trick stairs at Hogwarts; it was second nature to most of the older students to jump this particular step, but Neville's memory was notoriously poor. I seized him under the armpits and pulled him out, while a suit of armor at the top of the stairs creaked and clanked, laughing wheezily.

"Shut it," I said, banging down its visor as we passed.

We made our way up to the entrance to Gryffindor Tower, which was concealed behind a large portrait of a fat lady in a pink silk dress.

"Password?" she said as we approached.

"Balderdash," said George, "a prefect downstairs told me."

The portrait swung forward to reveal a hole in the wall through which we all climbed. A crackling fire warmed the circular common room, which was full of squashy armchairs and tables. Hermione cast the merrily dancing flames a dark look, and I distinctly heard her mutter "Slave labor" before bidding us good night and disappearing through the doorway to the girls dormitory.

Me, Harry, Ron, and Neville climbed up the last, spiral staircase until we reached our own dormitory, which was situated at the top of the tower. Six four-poster beds with deep crimson hangings stood against the walls, each with its owner's trunk at the foot. Dean and Seamus were already getting into bed; Seamus had pinned his Ireland rosette to his headboard, and Dean had tacked up a poster of Viktor Krum over his bedside table. His old poster of the West Ham football team was pinned right next to it.

"Mental," Ron sighed, shaking his head at the completely stationary soccer players.

Harry, Ron and Neville got into their pajamas and into bed while I just stripped down into my boxers and hopped under the covers, ignoring the looks I was getting from Dean, Seamus and Neville.

I sighed.

If people were going to treat me like a time bomb all through the school year... it was going to be one long year.


	7. Old Friends and Ferrets

****(ANYTHING YOU RECOGNIZE BELONGS TO J.K. ROWLING)****

* * *

The storm had blown itself out by the following morning (Thank God!) though the ceiling in the Great Hall was still gloomy; heavy clouds of pewter gray swirled overhead as Harry, Ron, Hermione and I examined our new course schedules at breakfast. A few seats along, Fred, George, and Lee Jordan were discussing magical methods of aging themselves and bluffing their way into the Triwizard Tournament.

"Today's not bad... outside all morning," said Ron, who was running his finger down the Monday column of his schedule. "Herbology with the Hufflepuffs and Care of Magical Creatures... damn it, we're still with the Slytherins..."

"Double Divination this afternoon," Harry groaned, looking down. Divination was our least favorite subject, apart from Potions. Professor Trelawney kept predicting Harry's death, which he found extremely annoying, and which was why I refused to attend the lessons.

"You should have given it up like me, shouldn't you?" said Hermione briskly, buttering herself some toast. "Then you'd be doing something sensible like Arithmancy."

"Yeah, sensible," I muttered sarcastically, then looked at Hermione's plate. "You're eating again, I notice," I said, watching Hermione adding liberal amounts of jam to her toast too.

"I've decided there are better ways of making a stand about elf rights," said Hermione haughtily.

"Yeah... and you were hungry," said Ron, grinning.

I finished my bacon and stood up, stretching.

"Where are you going?"Harry asked as the post owls flew in.

"Outside," I groaned, stretching again. "I need to move around or I'm gonna go slightly insane..." and with that, I walked out the Great Hall, ignoring anyone who looked at me funny.

The Hogwarts Grounds were calm. A few students were already making their way to classes, while others were enjoying the early morning sun. I headed down the sloping lawns, halfway to the lake when the wind blew on my face.

The scent hit me like a wrecking ball, like a battering ram. There was no image violent enough to encapsulate the force of what happened to me. I staggered, the scent was floral, sweet, savory. It was a scent like no other, and yet I was sure I'd smelt it before. Every time I sucked in a breath, the scent would swirl around my lungs, I could taste it on the back of my tongue, and I hardly noticed as my feet carried me towards the the source.

In a matter of seconds, I'd found the source.

She stood by the lakeside, turning when she saw me. The wind blew her hair towards me again, the scent washing over me, scattering my thoughts and causing me to blink. Her hair was as dark as midnight and cascaded down her back in a dark waterfall, contrasting with her ivory coloured skin. Her eyes were almost violet, like the last touch of sunset. Like the edge of the world.

And when she saw me, her face broke out in a breathtaking smile.

"Jack!" she exclaimed, running the short distance between us and engulfing me in a hug. I hugged her back, burying my face in her hair for a moment before pulling away, beaming at her.

"Katherine," I said, smiling back just as enthusiastically.

I hadn't seen Katherine in over four years. When we were nine, we were 'dating' so to speak. I fell head over heels in love with her, even though we were young. Then, when she was eleven, she left. Her parents - pureblood wizards - found out what I was and moved far away. I hadn't seen her since.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, keeping hold of my hands.

"I go to school here," I said, still smiling. "What are you doing here?"

"I go to school here," she - very badly - mimicked my voice. I rolled my eyes. "I was here in my first year, but me and my parents moved to Spain for my second and third years. We've only just come back."

"That's brilliant," I said earnestly, grinning. "Seeing as your parents don't seem to like me very much."

"Well, you are a half-werewolf-lycan-mule thing." she said, grinning.

I sighed, but couldn't help but smile. "How many times have I told you not to call me a mule?"

"Not enough," she said with a smirk.

I looked at her for a few moments, before asking "So, where does this leave us?"

"It depends," she said, stepping closer so were chest to chest. "Do you still love me?"

Her manner was joking, but I saw the doubt in her eyes.

"Katherine Slade," I said, leaning down the few inches between us so my forehead was pressed against hers. Her violet eyes locked with my gold ones. "I told you I loved you the day I met you. If anything had changed, I'd let you know."

She smiled, tilting her head and pressing her lips to mine.

When she pulled back, smiling, I noticed something.

"You're a Slytherin?" I asked, cocking my head to the side and smirking.

"I'm really ambitious," she said with a sly smile, locking her fingers in my hair. "And not to mention cunning. Although, as you can most likely guess, I'm not too fussed about the whole 'pureblood' shite."

I chuckled. "Good to know."

* * *

I arrived at Herbology five minutes later. Professor Sprout showing the class the ugliest plants I had ever seen. Indeed, they looked less like plants than thick, black, giant slugs, protruding vertically out of the soil. Each was squirming slightly and had a number of large, shiny swellings upon it, which appeared to be full of liquid.

"Bubotubers," Professor Sprout told us briskly. "They need squeezing. You will collect the pus -"

"The what?" said Seamus Finnigan, sounding revolted.

"Pus, Finnigan, pus," said Professor Sprout, "and it's extremely valuable, so don't waste it. You will collect the pus, I say, in these bottles. Wear your dragon-hide gloves; it can do funny things to the skin when undiluted, bubotuber pus."

* * *

I was glad when the bell signaled the end of lesson; an hour of squeezing 'pus' from 'bubotubers'. It stank strongly of petrol, and due to my heightened senses, I was nearly passing out, Professor Sprout allowing me to leave and get some air every few minutes.

We followed the other Gryffindors down the sloping lawn towards Hagrid's small wooden cabin, which stood on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Hagrid was standing outside his hut, one hand on the collar of his enormous black boarhound, Fang. There were several open wooden crates on the ground at his feet.

"Mornin'!" said Hagrid, grinning at us. "Be'er wait fer the Slytherins, they won' want ter miss this - Blast-Ended Skrewts!"

"Come again?" Ron asked.

Hagrid pointed down into the crates.

"Eurgh!" Lavender Brown squealed, jumping back.

I looked into one of them. They were cool. They looked like deformed, shell-less lobsters, pale and slimy-looking, with legs in very odd places and no visible heads. There were about a hundred of them in each crate, each about six inches long, crawling over one another, bumping blindly into the sides of the boxes. They smelled of rotting fish - which, again made me want to pass out- but I still thought they were cool.

"I think they're cool!" I said, earning me weird looks from the Gryffinors but a big smile from Hagrid.

"On'y jus' hatched." said Hagrid proudly. "so yeh'll be able ter raise 'em yerselves! Thought we'd make a bit of a projet of it!"

"And why would we want to raise them?" A cold voice asked.

The Slytherins had arrived. The speaker was none other than Malfoy. Oh joy. I spotted Katherine with the Slytherin girls, and she shot me a smile.

Hagrid looked stumped at the question.

"I mean, what do they do?" Malfoy continued. "Wha is the point of them?"

Hagrid opened his mouth, apparently thinking hard; there was a few seconds' pause. I was about to tell Malfoy where to stick it, but Hagrid said, "Tha's next lesson, Malfoy. Yer jus' feedin' 'em today. Now, yeh'll wan' ter try 'em on a few diff'ren things - I've never had 'em before, not sure what they'll go fer - I got some eggs an' frog livers an' a bit o' grass snake - just try 'em out with a bit o each."

"First pus and now this." I heard Seamus mutter. I laughed.

Everyone else was cautios about feeding the Skrewts, but I rushed right into it, picking the biggest one I could find and starting to feed it frog liver.

"Ouch!" said Dean after ten minutes of me feeding the Skrewt. Hagrid looked anxious as he hurried over.

"It's end exploded!" Dean sounded angry as he showed Hagrid the burn mark on his hand.

"Ah, yeah, tha' can happen when they blast off," Hagrid nodded and I smirked. So they were dangerous?

"Eurgh!" the Lavender squeeled. "Eurgh, Hagrid, what's that pointy thing on it?"

"Ah, some of 'em have got stings." Hagrid sounded enthusiastic. I grinned. "I reckon they're the male... The female's avr got sorta suckers things on their bellies... I think they mght be ter suck blood."

"That... is awesome." I said, looking for which weapon my Skrewt possessed. It had a stinger on the end. So a male then? Dave? Oh yeah, definitely a Dave.

"Well, I can certainly see why we're trying to keep them alive." Malfoy said sarcastically. "Who wouldn't want pets that can burn, sting and bite all at once?"

"Shut it," I told him. "These are awesome! Even though you might not think they're cute, it doesn't mean they're not useful."

Hermione helped me out. "Yeah," she said, "Dragon's blood's amazingly magical, but you wouldn't want a dragon for a pet, would you?"

"I would..." I said, stroking my Skrewt, making it make a funny and content noise. Maybe they were cute.

"Well, at least the Skrewts are small." Ron said as we walked back up to the castle for lunch an hour later

"They are now." Hermione said in an exasperated voice, "but once Hagrid's found out what they eat, I expect they'll be six feet long."

"Excellent" I grinned, they looked at me like I was mental.

* * *

We sat down at the Grifindow table and helped ourselves to lamb chops and potatoes. Hermione ate at high speed and took off, something about the library and 'seeing us at dinner'.

Harry and Ron set off for Divination while I went back up to the common room for a nap - as always. When I went back to the Great Hall for Dinner, my three friends were already waiting there, queuing to get into the hall.

"Weasley! Hey, Weasley!"

Me, Harry, Ron, and Hermione turned. Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were standing there, each looking thoroughly pleased about something.

"What?" said Ron shortly.

"Your dad's in the paper, Weasley!" said Malfoy, brandishing a copy of the Daily Prophet and speaking very loudly, so that everyone in the packed entrance hall could hear. "Listen to this!

_FURTHER MISTAKES AT THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC_

_It seems as though the Ministry of Magic's troubles are not yet at an end, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent. Recently under fire for its poor crowd control at the Quidditch World Cup, and still unable to account for the disappearance of one of its witches, and the possible appearance of a Lyco- believed to be Ministry was plunged into fresh embarrassment yesterday by the antics of Arnold Weasley, of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office."_

Malfoy looked up while I frowned; 'Lyco?' was that supposed to be another abbreviation?

"Imagine them not even getting his name right, Weasley. It's almost as though he's a complete nonentity, isn't it?" he crowed.

Everyone in the entrance hall was listening now. Malfoy straightened the paper with a flourish and read on:

_"Arnold Weasley, who was charged with possession of a flying car two years ago, was yesterday involved in a tussle with several Muggle law-keepers ("policemen") over a number of highly aggressive dustbins. Mr. Weasley appears to have rushed to the aid of "Mad-Eye" Moody, the aged ex-Auror who retired from the Ministry when no longer able to tell the difference between a handshake and attempted murder. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Weasley found, upon arrival at Mr. Moody's heavily guarded house, that Mr. Moody had once again raised a false alarm. Mr. Weasley was forced to modify several memories before he could escape from the policemen, but refused to answer Daily Prophet questions about why he had involved the Ministry in such an undignified and potentially embarrassing scene. _

"And there's a picture, Weasley!" said Malfoy, flipping the paper over and holding it up. "A picture of your parents outside their house - if you can call it a house! Your mother could do with losing a bit of weight, couldn't she?"

Ron was shaking with fury. Everyone was staring at him. Good thing he wasn't me right now, or he'd be a giant wolf.

"Get stuffed, Malfoy," said Harry. "C'mon, Ron..."

"Oh yeah, you were staying with them this summer, weren't you, Potter? Lupin?" sneered Malfoy. "So tell me, is his mother really that porky, or is it just the picture?"

"You know your mother, Malfoy?" I said, both me and Harry grabbing the back Ron's robes to stop him from launching himself at Malfoy - "that expression she's got, like she's got crap under her nose? Has she always looked like that, or was it just because you were with her?"

Malfoy's pale face went slightly pink.

"Don't you dare insult my mother, Dog!"

"Keep your mouth shut, then!" I snapped, turning away.

BANG!

Several people screamed - I felt something white-hot graze the side of my face - I plunged my hand into my robes for my wand, but before I'd even touched it, I heard a second loud BANG, and a roar that echoed through the entrance hall.

"OH NO YOU DON'T, LADDIE!"

We spun around. Professor Moody was limping down the marble staircase. His wand was out and it was pointing right at a pure white ferret, which was shivering on the stone-flagged floor, exactly where Malfoy had been standing.

And now it was officially the best moment of my life.

There was a terrified silence in the entrance hall. Nobody but Moody was moving a muscle. Moody turned to look at me - at least, his normal eye was looking at me; the other one was pointing into the back of his head.

"Did he get you?" Moody growled. His voice was low and gravelly.

"No," I said, "missed."

"LEAVE IT!" Moody shouted.

"Leave - what?" I asked, confused.

"Not you - him!" Moody growled, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at Crabbe, who had just frozen, about to pick up the white ferret. It seemed that Moody's rolling eye was magical and could see out of the back of his head.

I want one.

Moody started to limp toward Crabbe, Goyle and the ferret, which gave a terrified squeak and took off, streaking toward the dungeons.

"I don't think so!" roared Moody, pointing his wand at the ferret again - it flew ten feet into the air, fell with a smack to the floor, and then bounced upward once more.

"I don't like people who attack when their opponent's back's turned," growled Moody as the ferret bounced higher and higher, squealing in pain. "Stinking, cowardly, scummy thing to do..."

The ferret flew through the air, its legs and tail flailing helplessly.

"Never - do - that - again -" said Moody, speaking each word as the ferret hit the stone floor and bounced upward again.

"Professor Moody!" said a shocked voice.

Professor McGonagall was coming down the marble staircase with her arms full of books.

"Hello, Professor McGonagall," said Moody calmly, bouncing the ferret still higher.

"What - what are you doing?" said Professor McGonagall, her eyes following the bouncing ferret's progress through the air.

"Teaching," said Moody.

"Teach - Moody, is that a student?" shrieked Professor McGonagall, the books spilling out of her arms.

"Yep," said Moody.

"No!" cried Professor McGonagall, running down the stairs and pulling out her wand; a moment later, with a loud snapping noise, Draco Malfoy had reappeared, lying in a heap on the floor with his sleek blond hair all over his now brilliantly pink face. He got to his feet, wincing.

"Moody, we never use Transfiguration as a punishment!" said Professor McGonagall weakly. "Surely Professor Dumbledore told you that?"

"He might've mentioned it, yeah," said Moody, scratching his chin unconcernedly, "but I thought a good sharp shock -"

"We give detentions, Moody! Or speak to the offender's Head of House!"

"I'll do that, then," said Moody, staring at Malfoy with great dislike.

Malfoy, whose pale eyes were still watering with pain and humiliation, looked malevolently up at Moody and muttered something in which the words "my father" were distinguishable.

"Oh yeah?" said Moody quietly, limping forward a few steps, the dull clunk of his wooden leg echoing around the hall. "Well, I know your father of old, boy... You tell him Moody's keeping a close eye on his son... you tell him that from me... Now, your Head of House'll be Snape, will it?"

"Yes," said Malfoy resentfully.

"Another old friend," growled Moody. "I've been looking forward to a chat with old Snape... Come on, you..."

And he seized Malfoy's upper arm and marched him off toward the dungeons.

Professor McGonagall stared anxiously after them for a few moments, then waved her wand at her fallen books, causing them to soar up into the air and back into her arms.

"Don't talk to me," Ron said quietly to me, Harry and Hermione as we sat down at the Gryffindor table a few minutes later, surrounded by excited talk on all sides about what had just happened.

"Why not?" said Hermione in surprise.

"Because I want to fix that in my memory forever," said Ron, his eyes closed and an uplifted expression on his face. "Draco Malfoy, the amazing bouncing ferret."

The three of us laughed, and Hermione began doling beef casserole onto each of our plates.

"He could have really hurt Malfoy, though," she said. "It was good, really, that Professor McGonagall stopped it -"

"Hermione!" said Ron furiously, his eyes snapping open again, "you're ruining the best moment of my life!"

Hermione made an impatient noise and began to eat at top speed again.

"Don't tell me you're going back to the library this evening?" said Harry, watching her.

"Got to," said Hermione thickly. "Loads to do."

"But you told us Professor Vector -"

"It's not schoolwork," she said. Within five minutes, she had cleared her plate and departed. No sooner had she gone than her seat was taken by Fred.

"Moody!" he said. "How cool is he?"

"Beyond cool," said George, sitting down opposite Fred.

"Supercool," said the twins' best friend, Lee Jordan, sliding into the seat beside George. "We had him this afternoon," he told Harry and Ron.

"What was it like?" said Harry eagerly.

Fred, George, and Lee exchanged looks full of meaning.

"Never had a lesson like it," said Fred.

"He knows, man," said Lee.

"Knows what?" said Ron, leaning forward.

"Knows what it's like to be out there doing it," said George impressively.

"Doing what?" said Harry.

"Fighting the Dark Arts," said Fred.

"He's seen it all," said George.

"'Mazing," said Lee.

Ron dived into his bag for his schedule.

"We haven't got him till Thursday!" he said in a disappointed voice.

I was about to comment, but was stopped when I felt a familiar presence sit down next to me on the bench, making everyone - including most of the students from other houses - turn and look.

"Why is it whenever something embarrassing or mildly entertaining happens, you're always behind it?" Kat's voice caused me to turn and look at where she was perched next to me on the bench.

"I have no valid answer for that." I said, my lips twitching upwards at the corners. So that's why everyone was staring; a Slytherin pureblood sitting at the Gryffindor table with the werewolf.

Not out of the ordinary at all.

"Glad to hear it," she said sarcastically. "Well, I'll be off, I'm making your friends nervous."

It was true; all the Gryffindors close were staring at the two of us questioningly.

"Alright," I said. "See you later."

"Later." She said, kissing my cheek before getting up and leaving the Hall.

I turned to my surprised friends, who looked lost for words.

"Who was that Slytherin girl?" Ron asked in confusion and slight annoyance at the presence of a Slytherin.

"An old friend," I said, grabbing a random piece of food and taking a bite.


	8. Unforgivible? Gee, I Wonder Why

It was Thursday, and we were sitting in Moody's classroom now, and - to my displeasure - we were right in front of the teacher's desk. We all had our books, _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_, out on our desks. Hermione arrived just in time ("I've been in the Library -" "We know.").

I was uncomfortable sitting so close to the front. Something about Moody made me nervous. And after the whole Malfoy-Is-A-Ferret incident (which still made me laugh each time I thought about it) I didn't want to get on Moody's bad side.

Moody walked in, the distinctive clunking announcing his presence. "You can put those away," he growled, clunking over to his desk and sitting down. "Those books, you won't need them." everyone else was exited, I was nervous, and when I was nervous I can't stop fidgeting.

"Right then," he said, when he'd finished registration. "I've had a letter from Professor Lupin about this class. Seems you've had a pretty thorough grounding in tackling Dark Creatures - you've covered boggarts, Red Caps, hinkypunks, grindylows, Kappas and Werewolves, is that right?"

There was a general murmur of assent.

"But you're behind - very behind - on dealing with curses." Moody continued, "So I'm here to bring you up to scratch on what wizards can do to each other. I've got one year to teach you how to deal with Dark -"

"What, aren't you staying?" Ron blurted out. I would've kicked him, but Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at our desk. Ron looked extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiled - the first time I had seen him do so. The effect made his heavily scarred face look even more twisted and contorted than ever, but it was good to know he did anything as friendly as smile. Ron looked relieved.

"You'll be Arthur Weasley's son, eh?" Moody said. "Your father got me out of a very tight corner a few days ago... Yeah, I'm staying just the one year. Special favor to Dumbledore... One year, and then back to my quiet retirement."

He gave a harsh laugh, and then clapped his hands together.

"So - straight to it. Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic -" I snorted: what did those idiots know? "- I'm supposed to teach you counter curses and leave it at that. I'm not supposed to show you what illegal Dark curses look like until you're in the sixth year. You're not supposed to be old enough to deal with it until then. But Professor Dumbledore's got a higher opinion of your nerves, he reckons you can cope, and I say, the sooner you know what you're up against, the better. How are you supposed to defend yourself against something you've never seen? A wizard who's about to put an illegal curse on you isn't going to tell you what he's about o do. He's not going to do it nice and polite to your face. You need to be prepared. You need to be alert and watchful. You need to put that away, Miss Brown, when I'm talking."

Lavender jumped and blushed. She had been showing Parvati, her crumpled homework under the desk. Huh; apparently, Moody's magical eye could see through solid wood as well as out of the back of his head. I didn't know whether to think 'cool' or 'now I'm even more freaked out.'

"So... do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"

Several hands rose into the air, including Ron and Hermione's. Moody pointed to Ron, though his magical eye was still fixed on Lavender.

"Er," said Ron tentatively, "my dad told me about one... Is it called the Imperius Curse or something?"

"Ah, yes," said Moody appreciatively. "Your father would know that one. Gave the ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse."

Moody got heavily to his mismatched feet, opened his desk drawer, and took out a glass jar. Three large black spiders were scuttling around inside it. I noticed Ron Recoil slightly next to Harry. He didn't like spiders.

Moody reached into the jar, caught one of the spiders, and held it in the palm of his hand so that everyone could see. He then pointed his wand at it and muttered, "Imperio!"

The spider leapt from Moody's hand on a fine thread of silk and began to swing backward and forward as though on a trapeze. It stretched it's legs rigidly, then did a backflip, breaking the thread and landing on the desk, where it began to cartwheel in circles. I stopped looking as the class laughed. Taking away free will was not something I took lightly; after living under the orders of the Alpha for the better part of my life, it was no surprise really.

"Think it's funny do you?" Moody growled. "You'd like it, would you, if I did it to you?"

The laughter died away instantly.

"Total control," Moody said quietly, as I kept my gaze locked on the table. "I could make it jump out the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats."

Ron and I shuddered.

"Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperious Curse," said Moody, "Some job for the Ministry, trying to sort out who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free will. The Imperius Curse can be fought, and I'll be teaching you how, but it takes real strength and character, and not everyone's got it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he barked, making everyone jump.

Moody threw the somersaulting spider back into the jar.

"Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?"

Hermione and Neville put their hands into the air, Neville looking surprised at his own daring.

"Yes?" said Moody, his magical eye fixed on Neville.

"There's one - the Cruciatus Curse," Neville said in a small but distinct voice.

Moody looked intently at Neville, this time with both eyes.

"Your name's Longbottom?" he said, his eye swooping down to check the register again.

Neville nodded nervously, but Moody made no further inquires. Turning back to the class at large, he reached into the jar for the next spider and placed it upon the desktop, where it remained motionless, apparently too scared to move.

"The Crutiatus Curse," said Moody. "Need to be a bit bigger for you to get the idea," He pointed his wand at the spider and said, "Engorgio!"

The spider swelled, it was now bigger than a tarantula. Ron pushed his chair as far away from Moody's desk as possible and I gave him a look.

Moody raised his wand again, pointing it at the spider and muttered, "Crucio!"

At once, the spider's legs bent upon its body; it rolled over and began to twitch horribly. No sound came from it, but I was sure that if it could be given a voice, it would be screaming. Moody did not remove his wand and the spider started to shudder and jerk more violently -

"Stop it!" Hermione said shrilly.

I looked at her. She wasn't looking at the spider, but at Neville. His hands were clenched on the desk, his knuckles white, his eyes wide and horrified.

Moody raised his wand. The spider's legs relaxed, but it continued to twitch.

"Redicio," Moody muttered, and the spider shrank to it's proper size. He put it back in the jar.

"Pain," said Moody softly. "You don't need thumbscrews or knives to torture someone if you can perform the Crutiatus Curse... That one was very popular once too. Right... Anyone know any others.

Hermione shakily raised her hand. I raised my hand too. I knew this one.

"Yes?" said Moody, looking at me.

I looked him straight in his mismatched eyes and said clearly "Avada Kedavra."

Several people looked uneasily around at me, including Ron.

"Ah," said Moody, another slight smile twisting his lopsided mouth. "Yes, the last and worst. Avada Kedavra... The Killing Curse."

He put his hand into the jar, and almost as though it knew what was coming, the third spider scuttled frantically around the bottom of the jar, trying to evade Moody's fingers, but he trapped it, and placed it upon the desktop. It started to scuttle frantically across the wooden surface.

Moody raised his wand.

"Avada Kedavra!" Moody roared.

There was a flash of blinding green light and a rushing sound - instantaneously, the spider rolled over onto its back, unmarked, but unmistakably dead. Several of the students stifled cries; Ron had thrown himself backward as the spider had skidded towards him.

Moody swept the spider off the desk onto the floor.

"Not nice," he said calmly. "Not pleasant. And there's no countercurse. There's no blocking it. Only one person ever know has survived it, and he's sitting right in front of me."

Harry's face reddened as Moody stared at him and I stared at my hands.

Moody started talking again.

"Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it - you could all get your wands out now and point them at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed -" I almost snorted. "-But that doesn't matter. I'm not here to teach you how to do it. Now, if there's no countercurse, why am I showing you? Because you've got to know. You've got to appreciate what the worst is. You don't want to find yourself in a situation where you're facing it. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he roared, the whole class jumped again.

"Now... Those three curses - Avada Kedavra, Imperius, and Cruciatus - are known as the Unforgivable Curses. The use of any of them on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban. That's why you're up against it. That's what I've got to teach you to fight. You need preparing. You need arming. But most of all, you need to practice constant, never-ceasing vigilance. Get out your quills... Copy this down..."

We spent the rest of the lesson taking notes on each of the Unforgivable Curses. No one spoke until the bell rang - but when Moody had dismissed us and left the classroom, a torrent of talk burst forth. Most people were discussing the curses in awed voices - "Did you see it twitch?" "-and when he killed it - just like that!"

They were talking about the lesson as though it had been some sort of spectacular show. But I didn't find it entertaining - and neither did Harry or Hermione.

"Hurry up," she said tensely to us.

"Not the ruddy library again?" Ron begged.

"No," she said curtly, pointing up the side passage. "Neville."

Neville was standing alone, halfway up he side passage, staring at the stone wall opposite him with the same horrified, wide-eyed look he had when Moody demonstrated the Crutiatus Curse.

I walked on ahead, leaving my three friends behind. I went to the common room, and up to the dormitory. I flopped down on one of the seats and stared into the fire, wondering if Moody knew he had the power to scar people for life.


	9. I Didn't See That Coming

"That was a _lie_, Harry." Hermione told Harry sharply over breakfast, just after he told us that he had explained to Sirius he had 'imagined' his scar hurting - a sign that Voldemort was near. It wasn't the truth, yes, but if it stopped Sirius getting thrown back in Azkaban, it was the right thing to do. "You _didn't_ imagine your scar hurting and you know it."

"So what?" Harry argued. "He's not going back to Azkaban because of me."

"Drop it." Ron said when Hermione started to open her mouth to argue some more. I nodded in agreement, and Hermione fell silent.

I could tell Harry couldn't stop worrying about Sirius over the next few weeks. On the other hand, our lessons with Moody had become more difficult and demanding than ever before. So, I was skipping today's lesson. And taking a well deserved nap.

All of the forth years had noticed the definite increase in the amount of work we were required to do this term. Professor Binns, the ghost who taught History of Magic, had us writing weekly essays on the goblin rebellions of the eighteenth century. Sevvy was forcing us to research antidotes. Everyone except me took this seriously, as he had hinted that he might be poisoning one of us before Christmas to see if our antidote worked. But, werewolves - as I had learned last year - were very hard to poison. Professor Flitwick had asked us to read three extra books in preparation for our lesson on summoning charms.

No thankyou.

The only added workload I liked was Hagrid's. The Blast-Ended Skrewts were growing at a remarkable pace. Hagrid was delighted, and as part of our project, suggested that we come down to his hut on alternate evenings to observe the skrewts - which I already did, in between accompanying Hagrid into the forest.

"I will not," Draco Malfoy said flatly when Hagrid had proposed this with great excitement. "I see enough of these foul things during lessons, thanks."

Hagrid's smile faded off his face and I growled.

"Yeh'll do wha' yer told," he growled, even I was surprised. "or I'll be takin' a leaf outta Professor Moody's book... I hear yeh make a good ferret, Malfoy."

The Gryffindors roared with laughter. I laughed so hard it actually hurt.

When we arrived in the entrance hall for lunch, we found ourselves unable to proceed owing to the large crowd of students gathered there, all around a large sign that had been erected at the foot of the marble staircase. Ron, the tallest of us, stood in tiptoe to see over the heads in front to read the sign aloud to us. I shook my head and pushed through the sea of students, reaching the sign and reading it for myself:

**TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT**

**The delegations from Beauxbatons and Drumstrang will be arriving at 6 o'clock on Friday the 30th of October. Lessons will end half an hour early** - Yes! - **Students will return their bags to their dormitories and assemble in front of the castle to greet our guests before the Welcoming Feast.**

Tomorrow?

"I'll have to take a rain-check." I explained. "I have loads to do..."

"Like what?" Hermione asked.

"Ya know, runs and stuff..." I said.

"Oh!" Harry said. "It's Halloween!"

"What's so special about Hallo - oh..." Understanding dawned on Hermione's face.

"Yeah, there's a blue moon. I may not be a werewolf, but the moon affects me in a way that's... not good." I waved and began to walk away. "Make sure to come get me if anything happens..."

I waved again, then jogged outside.

I ran across the grounds and saw Hagrid outside his hut. I waved as I jogged into the forest, pulling off my shirt as I went before leaping through empty air, shifting in mid flight, my front paws hitting the ground first before my back ones propelled me forward. I let out a loud howl as I ran. Tonight was a good night for a run.

The thing about a blue moon, was it when there were two full moons, one after the other. So, I usually stayed outside, otherwise I'd be fidgety and restless.

* * *

I decided once the moon was up in the sky on my third night in the forest and the second day of the blue moon to head to dinner, as I was starving and curious to see who the champions were. My T-shirt was slightly torn, my jeans were dirty and my hair was a mess, but I didn't mind.

A Blue Moon was a really awkward event for me. Wolfsbane potion wouldn't help me feeling shit, my mood was all over the place for days afterwards as the moon righted itself. My Dad would have the worst of it though; two transformations in a row were bound to be hard on him. I spent a few days in the forest so no one could be affected by my moods, which I was happy with.

I walked into the Hall and stood against a shadowed wall, crossing my arms and leaning against it.

"The Hogwarts champion," Dumbledore called, "is Cedric Diggory!"

Every single Hufflepuff had jumped to his or her feet, and I clapped loudly with the rest.

I watched Cedric make his way as best he could through the door behind the teachers' table.

"Excellent!" Dumbledore called happily as at last the tumult died down. "Well, we now have our three champions." Damn, I'd missed it. Oh well, I could ask Harry. "I am sure I can count upon all of you, including the remaining students from Beauxbatons and Drumstrang, to give your champions every ounce of support you can muster. By cheering your champion on, you will contribute is a very real -"

But Dumbledore suddenly stopped speaking, and it was apparent to everybody what had distracted him.

The fire in the goblet had just turned red again. Sparks were flying out of it. A long flame shot suddenly into the air, and borne upon it was two more pieces of parchment. I stood up from against the wall and let my arms fall to my sides.

Automatically, it seemed, Dumbledore reached out a long hand and seized the parchment pieces out of mid air. He held it out and stared at the names written upon them. There was a long pause, during which Dumbledore stared at the slips in his hands, and everyone in the room stared at Dumbledore. And then Dumbledore cleared his throat and read out -

"Harry Potter... Jack Lupin..."

Shit.

No one could see me because I was still in the shadows, but there were people looking for me.

"Ron, go get Jack!" I head Hermione hiss to Ron as Harry stood up and made his way towards the teachers table, and through the door. I pushed away from the wall and walked quickly past my two friends with a confused look on my face. I shrugged at Hermione as I passed, and headed the way Harry went.

The faces in the portraits turned to look at me as I entered. Viktor Krum, Cedric Diggory, a blonde chick and Harry were grouped around the fire. I walked over quickly and silently, putting my hand on Harry's shoulder and making him jump.

"There you are! Where were you?" he asked, looking at my appearance like the others were.

"Forest." I shrugged.

"What is it?" the girl said . "Do zey want us back in ze Hall?"

There was a sound of scurrying feet behind us, and Ludo Bagman entered the room. He took us by the arms and led us forward.

"Extraordinary!" he muttered, squeezing my arm. "Absolutely extraordinary! Gentlemen... lady," he added, approaching the fireside and addressing the other three. "May I introduce - incredible though it may seem - the fourth and fifth Triwizard champions?"

Viktor Krum straightened up. His surly face darkened as he surveyed me and Harry. Cedric looked nonplussed. He looked from Bagman to me to Harry and back again as though sure he must have misheard what Bagman had said. The girl, however, tossed her hair, smiling, and said, "Oh, vairy funny joke, Meester Bagman."

"Joke?" Bagman repeated, bewildered. "No, no, not at all! Jack and Harry's names just came out of the Goblet of Fire!"

Krum's thick eyebrows contracted slightly. Cedric was still looking politely bewildered. The girl frowned.

"But evidently zair 'as been a mistake," she said contemptuously to Bagman. "Zey cannot compete. Zey are too young."

"Well...it is amazing," said Bagman, rubbing his smooth chin and smiling down at Harry. What was I? Chopped liver? "But, as you know, the age restriction was only imposed this year as an extra safety measure. And as their names came out of the goblet... I mean, I don't think there can be any ducking out at this stage... It's down in the rules, you're obliged... Harry and Jack will just have to do the best they -"

The door behind us opened again, and a large group of people came in: Professor Dumbledore, followed closely by Mr. Crouch, an odd man with a goatee, a very, very large woman who could give Hagrid a run for his money, Professor McGonagall, and Professor Snape. I heard the buzzing of the hundreds of students on the other side of the wall, before Professor McGonagall closed the door.

"Madame Maxime!" said the girl at once, striding over to her headmistress. "Zey are saying zat zeese little boys are to compete also!"

I felt a ripple of anger, but pushed it down. The moon was already affecting me.

The woman I assumed Madame Maxime had drawn herself up to her full, and considerable, height. The top of her head brushed the candle-filled chandelier, and I was wondering if this night would get any better if her head set on fire.

"What is ze meaning of zis, Dumbly-dorr?" she said imperiously.

"I'd rather like to know that myself, Dumbledore," said goaty man. He was wearing a steely smile, and his blue eyes were like chips of ice. "Three Hogwarts champions? I don't remember anyone telling me the host school is allowed three champions - or have I not read the rules carefully enough?"

He gave a short and nasty laugh.

"C'est impossible," said Madame Maxime. "'Ogwarts cannot 'ave tree champions. It is most injust."

"We were under the impression that your Age Line would keep out younger contestants, Dumbledore," said goatie-man, his steely smile still in place, though his eyes were colder than ever. "Otherwise, we would, of course, have brought along a wider selection of candidates from our own schools."

"It's no one's fault but Potter's and Lupin's, Karkaroff," said Snape softly. His black eyes were alight with malice. "Don't go blaming Dumbledore for Their determination to break rules. They have been crossing lines ever since he arrived here -"

"Thank you, Severus," said Dumbledore firmly, and Snape went quiet, though his eyes still glinted malevolently through his curtain of greasy black hair.

Professor Dumbledore was now looking down at us, and I looked right back at him, trying to discern the expression of the eyes behind the half-moon spectacles.

"Did you put your name into the Goblet of Fire boys?" he asked calmly.

"No," said Harry and me at the same time. I was very aware of everybody watching us closely. Snape made a soft noise of impatient disbelief in the shadows and I threw a glare his way.

"Did you ask an older student to put it into the Goblet of Fire for you?" said Professor Dumbledore, ignoring Snape and me.

"No,"

"Ah, but of course zey are lying!" cried Madame Maxime. Snape was now shaking his head, his lip curling.

"They could not have crossed the Age Line," said Professor McGonagall sharply. "I am sure we are all agreed on that -"

"Dumbly-dorr must 'ave made a mistake wiz ze line," said Madame Maxime, shrugging.

"It is possible, of course," said Dumbledore politely.

"Dumbledore, you know perfectly well you did not make a mistake!" said Professor McGonagall angrily. "Really, what nonsense! Harry or Jack could not have crossed the line himself, and as Professor Dumbledore believes that they did not persuade an older student to do it for them, I'm sure that should be good enough for everybody else!"

She shot a very angry look at Professor Snape.

"Mr. Crouch... Mr. Bagman," said the man with the goatie, who I suppose was called Karkaroff. "You are our - er - objective judges. Surely you will agree that this is most irregular?"

Bagman wiped his round, boyish face with his handkerchief and looked at Mr. Crouch, who was standing outside the circle of the firelight, his face half hidden in shadow. He looked slightly eerie, the half darkness making him look much older, giving him an almost skull-like appearance. When he spoke, however, it was in his usual curt voice.

"We must follow the rules, and the rules state clearly that those people whose names come out of the Goblet of Fire are bound to compete in the tournament."

"Well, Barty knows the rule book back to front," said Bagman, beaming and turning back to Karkaroff and Madame Maxime, as though the matter was now closed.

"I insist upon resubmitting the names of the rest of my students," said Karkaroff. He had dropped his smile now. His face wore a very ugly look indeed. "You will set up the Goblet of Fire once more, and we will continue adding names until each school has three champions. It's only fair, Dumbledore."

"But Karkaroff, it doesn't work like that," said Bagman. "The Goblet of Fire's just gone out - it won't reignite until the start of the next tournament -"

"- in which Durmstrang will most certainly not be competing!" exploded Karkaroff. "After all our meetings and negotiations and compromises, I little expected something of this nature to occur! I have half a mind to leave now!"

"Empty threat, Karkaroff," growled a voice from near the door. "You can't leave your champion now. He's got to compete. They've all got to compete. Binding magical contract, like Dumbledore said. Convenient, eh?"

Moody had just entered the room. Oh joy, more friendly banter.

"Convenient?" said Karkaroff. "I'm afraid I don't understand you, Moody."

I could tell he was trying to sound disdainful, as though what Moody was saying was barely worth his notice, but his hands gave him away; they had balled themselves into fists. Someone wasn't very happy.

"Don't you?" said Moody quietly. "It's very simple, Karkaroff. Someone put Potter and Lupin's name in that goblet knowing they'd have to compete if it came out."

"Evidently, someone 'oo wished to give 'Ogwarts tree bites at ze apple!" said Madame Maxime.

"I quite agree, Madame Maxime," said Karkaroff, bowing to her. "I shall be lodging complaints with the Ministry of Magic and the International Confederation of Wizards -"

"If anyone's got reason to complain, it's Potter and Lupin," growled Moody, "but... Funny thing... I don't hear them saying a word..."

"Why should zey complain?" burst out the girl, stamping her foot like a young child. "zey 'ave ze chance to compete, 'asn't zey? We 'ave all been 'oping to be chosen for weeks and weeks! Ze honor for our schools! A thousand Galleons in prize money - zis is a chance many would die for!"

"Maybe someone's hoping Potter and Lupin are going to die for it," said Moody, with the merest trace of a growl.

An extremely tense silence followed these words. Ludo Bagman, who was looking very anxious indeed, bounced nervously up and down on his feet and said, "Moody, old man... What a thing to say!"

"We all know Professor Moody considers the morning wasted if he hasn't discovered six plots to murder him before lunchtime," said Karkaroff loudly. Ooh, burn."Apparently he is now teaching his students to fear assassination too. An odd quality in a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Dumbledore, but no doubt you had your reasons.

"Imagining things, am I?" growled Moody. "Seeing things, eh? It was a skilled witch or wizard who put the boy's names in that goblet..."

"Ah, what evidence is zere of zat?" said Madame Maxime, throwing up her huge hands.

"Because they hoodwinked a very powerful magical object!" said Moody. "It would have needed an exceptionally strong Confundus Charm to bamboozle that goblet into forgetting that only three schools compete in the tournament... I'm guessing they submitted Potter's name under a fourth school, and Lupin's under a fifth, to make sure they were the only ones in their categories..."

"You seem to have given this a great deal of thought, Moody," said Karkaroff coldly, "and a very ingenious theory it is - though of course, I heard you recently got it into your head that one of your birthday presents contained a cunningly disguised basilisk egg, and smashed it to pieces before realizing it was a carriage clock. So you'll understand if we don't take you entirely seriously..."

"There are those who'll turn innocent occasions to their advantage," Moody retorted in a menacing voice. "It's my job to think the way Dark wizards do, Karkaroff - as you ought to remember..."

"Alastor!" said Dumbledore warningly. I wondered for a moment whom he was speaking to, but then realized "Mad-Eye" could hardly be Moody's real first name. Moody fell silent, though still surveying Karkaroff with satisfaction - Karkaroff's face was burning. This was getting a little odd, so I decided to intervene.

"Umm," I began. Everyone gathered in the room turned their attention to me. "Right, we've been chosen to do this tournament or whatever, and there's nothing we can do about, it, yes?" I directed my words at Dumbledore, who nodded. "Then can we please stop going round in circles and get on with it?"

Madame Maxine was glaring at me, and she wasn't the only one. Snape looked furious; Karkaroff livid; Bagman, however, looked rather excited.

"Well, shall we crack on, then?" he said, rubbing his hands together and smiling around the room. "Got to give our champions their instructions, haven't we? Barty, want to do the honors?"

Mr. Crouch seemed to come out of a deep reverie.

"Yes," he said, "instructions. Yes... The first task..."

He moved forward into the firelight. Close up, I thought he looked ill. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes and a thin, papery look about his wrinkled skin that had not been there at the Quidditch World Cup. Maybe Hermione had cursed him or something.

"The first task is designed to test your daring," he told me, Harry, Cedric, the girl I remembered someone had said was Fleur, and Viktor, "so we are not going to be telling you what it is. Courage in the face of the unknown is an important quality in a wizard... very important...

"The first task will take place on November the twenty-fourth, in front of the other students and the panel of judges.

"The champions are not permitted to ask for or accept help of any kind from their teachers to complete the tasks in the tournament. The champions will face the first challenge armed only with their wands. They will receive information about the second task when the first is over. Owing to the demanding and time-consuming nature of the tournament, the champions are exempted from end-of-year tests."

Mr. Crouch turned to look at Dumbledore.

"I think that's all, is it, Albus?"

"I think so," said Dumbledore, who was looking at Mr. Crouch with mild concern. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to stay at Hogwarts tonight, Barty?"

"No, Dumbledore, I must get back to the Ministry," said Mr. Crouch. "It is a very busy, very difficult time at the moment... I've left young Weatherby in charge... Very enthusiastic... a little overenthusiastic, if truth be told..."

"You'll come and have a drink before you go, at least?" said Dumbledore.

"Come on, Barry, I'm staying!" said Bagman brightly. "It's all happening at Hogwarts now, you know, much more exciting here than at the office!"

"I think not, Ludo," said Crouch with a touch of his old impatience. Ah, glad to see he was back to his old wonderful self.

"Professor Karkaroff - Madame Maxime - a nightcap?" said Dumbledore.

But Madame Maxime had already put her arm around Fleur's shoulders and was leading her swiftly out of the room. I could hear them both talking very fast in French as they went off into the Great Hall. Karkaroff beckoned to Krum, and they, too, exited, though in silence.

"Boys, I suggest you go up to bed," said Dumbledore, smiling at me, Harry and Cedric. "I am sure Gryffindor and Hufflepuff are waiting to celebrate with you, and it would be a shame to deprive them of this excellent excuse to make a great deal of mess and noise."

I glanced at Cedric, who nodded, and the three of us left together.

The Great Hall was deserted now; the candles had burned low, giving the jagged smiles of the pumpkins an eerie, flickering quality.

"So," said Cedric, with a slight smile. "We're playing against each other again!"

"I s'pose," said Harry. I really couldn't think of anything to add to the conversation. I wasn't sure of how to react to this latest discovery, and mix my confusion with the affects of the blue moon, I was lucky I could move one foot in front of the other.

"So... Tell me..." Said Cedric as we reached the entrance hall, which was now lit only by torches in the absence of the Goblet of Fire. "How did you get your names in?"

"We didn't," said me and Harry at once, staring up at him. Why do people have to be taller than us?

"We didn't put it in," Harry said. "We were telling the truth."

"Ah... Okay," said Cedric. I could tell Cedric didn't believe us, just by the twitch of the corner of his lip, the way his eyes moved from us then back again. I had to stop myself from snapping at him. God, the moon made me cranky. "Well...see you, then."

Instead of going up the marble staircase, Cedric headed for a door to its right. We stood listening to him going down the stone steps beyond it, then, slowly, we started to climb the marble ones in silence.

I got a shock to find myself facing the Fat Lady so fast. I had barely noticed where my feet were carrying me, so caught up in my own thoughts and assumptions about the Tournament. It was also a surprise to see that she was not alone in her frame. A wizened witch was now sitting smugly beside the Fat Lady. I'd seen her by the chamber, so she must have dashed through every picture lining seven staircases to reach here before we did. Both she and the Fat Lady were looking down at us with the keenest interest.

"Well, well, well," said the Fat Lady, "Violet's just told me everything. Who's just been chosen as school champions, then?"

"Balderdash," said Harry dully.

"It most certainly isn't!" said the pale witch indignantly.

"No, no, Vi, it's the password," said the Fat Lady soothingly, and she swung forward on her hinges to let us into the common room.

The blast of noise that met my ears when the portrait opened almost knocked me backward. Next thing I knew, me and Harry were being wrenched inside the common room by about a dozen pairs of hands, and stood facing the whole of Gryffindor House, all of whom were screaming, applauding, and whistling.

I sprinted past them unnoticed as they bombarded Harry, and ran up into the dormitory, jumping into bed fully clothed and looking at nothing in particular. I pulled the hangings closed around the bed and sighed. I wanted so much to run back into the forest and stay there for a good few days, but I knew I couldn't, not now I'd been picked as a champion of all things. People would think I'd run away.

Jack Lupin didn't run away.

Well, apart from when Moony was in a bad mood.

_Then_, it was time to run.


	10. Temper Issues and Interviews

On Monday, after I woke up, I jogged straight to the owlery to do the thing I had been dreading.

**_Dear Moony,_**

**_Greetings from Hogwarts! As you may know, the Triwizard Tournament is taking place at Hogwarts this year, and three champions had to be chosen from three different schools. Beuxbaton's headmistress is UBER tall. Durmstang's headmaster is kind of scary, but not enough to send me into hysterics. His name is Karkoff._**

**_Anyway, the Goblet of Fire spat out the names - Viktor Krum for Durmstrang, Fluer Delacour for Beauxbatons, and Cedric Diggory for Hogwarts - but something happened..._**

**_To make a long story short, lets just say I might be bringing home a thousand Galleons. If you haven't guessed already, I was chosen as the fifth champion, Harry as the forth. There was a huge discussion about it, but in the end, we were declared champions. BTW - that means by-the-way - we have no idea who put out names in the goblet._**

**_I know you won't be answering this for a while, but please, no howlers!_**

**_Jack._**

The Hufflepuffs acted coldly towards me and Harry. The only one that had talked to me was Cedric. He's a cool guy. It didn't take me long to realize Harry and Ron weren't talking. I shrugged it off and sat next to Harry, while Hermione sat next to Ron.

Care of Magical Creatures wasn't better either. The Slytherins are pricks. Enough said.

"Ah, look boys, it's the champions," Malfoy said to Crabbe and Goyle, his usual sneer on his face. "Got your autograph book? Better get a signature now, because I doubt they're going to be around much longer... Half the Triwizard champions have died... how long d'you reckon you're going to last Lupin? Ten minutes into the first task's my bet."

I growled, my hands shaking. The Blue Moon had passed, but I'd had serious problems with my anger lately, and it took all I had not to rip Malfoy's head off.

Malfoy had to stop there, because Hagrid had emerged from the back of his cabin balancing a teetering tower of crates, each containing a very large Blast-Ended Skrewt. Hagrid proceeded to explain the reason the Skrewts were killing each other was an excess of pent up energy, and that the solution would be for each student to fix a leash on a Skrewt and take it for a walk.

Good idea, Hagrid, would you like me to go and insult a Hippogriff now?

The next few days were some of my worst at Hogwarts. I could understand the Hufflepuffs' attitude - and I couldn't care less - and I expected nothing less from the Slytherins - still couldn't care less.

Meanwhile there was no reply from Moony or Padfoot, Hedwig was refusing to go anywhere near Harry, and my anger was getting the better of me.

"It's really not that difficult Harry," Hermione tried to reassure him as we left Flitwick's class - she had been making objects zoom towards her all lesson, as though she were some sort of weird magnet for board dusters, wastepaper baskets and lunascopes. "You jut weren't concentrating properly -"

"Wonder why that was," I said as Ced walked past, surrounded by a large group of simpering girls, all of them looked at me and Harry as though we were a particularly large Blast-Ended Skrewt. At my glare, they all scampered away.

"Still - never mind, eh? Double Potions to look forward to..."

"Oh, shit!" I said remembering Potions and resisting the urge to throw myself from the Astronomy tower. "Why must we have double-classes?"

When me, Harry and Hermione arrived at Snape's dungeon after lunch, we found the Slytherins waiting outside, each and every one of them wearing a large badge on the front of their robes. For one wild moment, I thought they were S.P.E.W badges - then I noticed they all bore the same message:

_**Support CEDRIC DIGGORY - the REAL Hogwarts champion!**_

"Like them boys?" Malfoy asked loudly as we approached. "And that isn't all they do - look."

He pressed his badge to his chest, and the message upon it vanished, to be replaced by another one, which glowed green:

_**POTTER STINKS**_

The Slytherins howled with laughter. Each of them pressed their badges too. Quite a few of them read _**LUPIN STINKS** _too.

"Oh very funny," Hermione said sarcastically to Pansy Parkinson and her gang of Slytherin girls, who were laughing harder than anyone, "really witty."

Ron was standing against the wall with Dean and Seamus. He wasn't laughing, but he wasn't sticking up for us either.

Well, go be ginger then.

"Want one Granger?" said Malfoy, holding one out to Hermione. At this point, it was physically painful to hold onto my anger as I staggered back into the wall, my hands shaking. "I've got loads. But don't touch my hand, now, I've just washed it you see; I don't want Mudblood sliming it up.

Harry reacted before I could. He had his wand out and pointed at Malfoy before I could jump him and everyone backed up, making space.

"Harry!" Hermione said warningly.

"Go on then, Potter," Malfoy said quietly, drawing out his own wand. "Moody's not here to look after you now - do it, if you've got the guts -"

For a split second, they looked into eachother's eyes, then, at exactly the same time, both acted.

"_Furnunculus_!" Harry yelled.

"_Densaugeo_!" Malfoy screamed.

Jets of light shot out from both wands, hit eachother in midair, and ricocheted off at angles - Harry's hit Goyle in the face, and Malfoy's hit Hermione, narrowly missing me. Goyle bellowed and put his hands to his nose, where great ugly boils were springing up - Hermione, whimpering in panic, was clutching her mouth.

"Hermione!"

Ron hurried forward to see what was wrong with her. I was trying to get her to remove her hand from her mouth. Hermione's front teeth - already larger than average - were now growing at an alarming rate; she was looking more and more like a beaver as her teeth elongated, past her bottom lip, toward her chin - panic-stricken, she felt them and let out a terrified cry.

"And what is all this noise about?" said a cold, deadly voice.

Oh hu - fucking - rah.

Snape had arrived. The Slytherins clamored to give their explanations; Snape pointed a long finger at Malfoy and said "Explain."

Yes, let Malfoy explain. Idiot.

"Potter attacked me, sir -"

"We attacked each other at the same time!" Harry shouted. Like that would get him anywhere with Snape.

" - and he hit Goyle - look - "

Snape examined Goyle, whose face now resembled something that would look at home in a book on poisonous fungi. Nice.

"Malfoy got Hermione!" Ron said. "Look!"

He forced Hermione to show Snape her teeth - she was doing her best to hide them with her hands, though that was difficult as they had grown down past her collar. The Slytherin girls were doubled up with silent giggles, pointing at Hermione from behind Snape's back.

Snape looked coldly at Hermione, then said, "I see no difference."

Hermione let out a whimper; her eyes filled with tears, she turned on her heel and ran, ran all the way up the corridor and out of sight.

That did it.

A shudder rippled through me, along my shoulders and down my spine. Harry, noticing this, looked at me wary.

"Jack?" he asked. I shook my head, closing my eyes and trying to concentrate.

"Mr. Lupin," Snape's voice said, snapping my anger back. "If you are done with this foolis-"

Another shudder, another convulsion, heaved through my body. I felt a rush of heat and a tingle of pain ripple through me and the next second, death black fur blew out from my body, coalescing into a shape more than five times my size. I looked at Snape with golden eyes, muscles tense and ready.

Another growl rumbled through my colossal chest as my muzzle wrinkled back over my teeth, my dark, enraged eyes focused on Snape. I was taller than him, and for once, he looked frightened, shocked and calculating all at the same time. Many of the students screamed.

"Jack!" said Harry in alarm. I snapped my head towards him, and stopped growling. I let out a huge sigh, straightening out of my defensive stance and looking at Snape one last time. Then, I turned around sharply, and was out of there so fast I doubted anyone saw more than a blur.

I carried on running, following Hermione's scent as I did.

I found her in the hospital wing, her teeth normal sized. I trotted through the door, making her jump and Madam Pomfrey gasp. I jumped forwards, shifting halfway through the air and landing skillfully on the balls of my feet. I brushed off my trousers casually.

"Jack!" Hermione exclaimed. "What happened?"

"I just lost my temper, that's all," I said reassuringly. Madam Pomfrey said something about a calming draught and quickly walked away, leaving me to wonder if it was for me or herself. "Nice teeth."

Hermione's teeth, now I looked at them, weren't her normal slightly-larger-than-average-beaver-teeth, but average sized and straight. She grinned at me, showing them off.

"Thanks," she said, looking pleased. "Madam Pomfrey told me to tell her when they were back to normal, but I just let her carry on a bit. My parents will be disappointed though; they wanted me to have braces."

Just then, Colin Creevy walked into the hospital wing.

"Jack Lupin?" he asked, walking over to me.

"Yeah?"

"Bagman wants to see you."

"Does he now?"

"Yep." Collin was too cheerful for his own good. "Follow me."

"Er... ok..." I looked at Hermione. "I'll see you at dinner, okay?"

She nodded and I followed Colin outside. Harry was here, leaning against a wall.

"Hey," I said as we followed Colin.

"You okay?" he asked urgently.

"I'm fine, I just lost my temper."

"Everyone sort of freaked out," he said with a grin. "Never knew you could be so... scary."

"That's me." I sighed.

"Good luck!" Collin said as we reached the right room. Harry knocked and we entered.

It was a fairly small classroom; most of the desks had been pushed away to the back of the room, leaving a large space in the middle; three of them, however, had been placed end-to-end in front of the blackboard and covered with a long length of velvet. Five chairs had been set behind the velvet-covered desks, and Ludo Bagman was sitting in one of them, talking to a witch I had never seen before, who was wearing magenta robes.

Viktor Krum was standing moodily in a corner as usual and not talking to anybody. Cedric and Fheur were in conversation. Fheur looked a good deal happier than Harry had seen her so far; she kept throwing back her head so that her long silvery hair caught the light. A paunchy man, holding a large black camera that was smoking slightly, was watching Fleur out of the corner of his eye.

Bleugh.

Bagman suddenly spotted Harry, got up quickly, and bounded forward.

"Ah, here he is! Champion number four! In you come, Harry, in you come... Nothing to worry about, it's just the wand weighing ceremony, the rest of the judges will be here in a moment -"

"Wand weighing?" Harry repeated nervously.

"We have to check that your wands are fully functional, no problems, you know, as they're your most important tools in the tasks ahead," said Bagman. "The expert's upstairs now with Dumbledore. And then there's going to be a little photo shoot. This is Rita Skeeter," he added, gesturing toward the witch in magenta robes. "She's doing a small piece on the tournament for the Daily Prophet..."

"Maybe not that small, Ludo," said Rita Skeeter, her eyes on me and Harry.

Her hair was set in elaborate and curiously rigid curls that contrasted oddly with her heavy-jawed face. She wore jeweled spectacles. The thick fingers clutching her crocodile-skin handbag ended in two-inch nails, painted crimson. She smelled heavily of perfume, it made me want to gag.

"I wonder if I could have a little word with Jack and Harry before we start?" she said to Bagman, but still gazing fixedly at Harry. "The youngest champions, you know... to add a bit of color?"

"Certainly!" cried Bagman. "That is - if they have no objection?"

"Well -" I began.

"Lovely," said Rita Skeeter, and in a second, her scarlet-taloned fingers had mine and Harry's upper arms in a surprisingly strong grip, and she was steering us out of the room again and opening a nearby door.

"We don't want to be in there with all that noise," she said. "Let's see... ah, yes, this is nice and cozy."

It was a broom cupboard. I stared at her.

"Come along, dears - that's right - lovely," said Rita Skeeter again, perching herself precariously upon an upturned bucket, pushing Harry down onto a cardboard box, and me next to him, closing the door, throwing us into darkness. "Let's see now..."

She unsnapped her crocodile-skin handbag and pulled out a handful of candles, which she lit with a wave of her wand and magicked into midair, so that we could see what we were doing.

"You won't mind, if I use a Quick-Quotes Quill? It leaves me free to talk to you normally..."

"A what?" asked Harry. I frowned as Rita Skeeter's smile widened. She reached again into her crocodile bag and drew out a long acid-green quill and a roll of parchment, which she stretched out between us on a crate. She put the tip of the green quill into her mouth, sucked it for a moment, then placed it upright on the parchment, where it stood balanced on its point, quivering slightly.

Odd, don't you think?

"Testing... my name is Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet reporter."

I looked down quickly at the quill. The moment Rita Skeeter had spoken, the green quill had started to scribble, skidding across the parchment:

**_Attractive blonde Rita Skeeter, forty-three, who's savage quill has punctured many inflated reputations -_**

"Lovely," said Rita Skeeter, yet again, and she ripped the top piece of parchment off, crumpled it up, and stuffed it into her handbag. Now she leaned toward Harry and said, "So, Harry... what made you decide to enter the Triwizard Tournament?"

"Er -" said Harry again, but I was distracted by the quill. Even though Harry wasn't speaking, it was dashing across the parchment, and in its wake I could make out a fresh sentence:

**_An ugly scar, souvenir of a tragic past, disfigures the otherwise charming face of Harry Potter, whose eyes -_**

"Ignore the quill, Jack," said Rita Skeeter firmly. Reluctantly I looked up at her instead. "Now - why did you decide to enter the tournament, Jack?"

"I didn't," I said. "We didn't. I don't know how our names got into the Goblet of Fire. We didn't put them in there."

Rita Skeeter raised one heavily penciled eyebrow.

"Come now, Jack, there's no need to be scared of getting into trouble. We all know you shouldn't really have entered at all. But don't worry about that. Our readers hove a rebel."

"I don't care about your readers, I didn't enter," I repeated. "I don't know who -"

"How do you feel about the tasks ahead?" said Rita Skeeter to Harry. "Excited? Nervous?"

"I haven't really thought... yeah, nervous, I suppose," said Harry

"Champions have died in the past, haven't they?" said Rita Skeeter briskly. "Have you thought about that at all?"

"Well... they say it's going to be a lot safer this year," said Harry.

The quill whizzed across the parchment between us, back and forward as though it were skating.

"Of course, you've looked death in the face before, haven't you?" said Rita Skeeter, watching him closely. "How would you say that's affected you?"

"Er," said Harry, yet again.

"Do you think that the trauma in your past might have made you keen to prove yourself? To live up to your name? Do you think that perhaps you were tempted to enter the Triwizard Tournament because -"

"We didn't enter," said Harry. I was starting to feel irritated.

"Can you remember your parents at all?" said Rita Skeeter, talking over him.

"No," said Harry.

"How do you think they'd feel if they knew you were competing in the Triwizard Tournament? Proud? Worried? Angry?"

Frowning, I avoided her gaze and hooked down at words the quill had written. The loopy handwriting was murder on my eyes, but I was sure I hadn't said any of the things written on the parchment.

Before Rita Skeeter could say a word, the door of the broom cupboard was pulled open. I looked around, blinking in the bright light. Dumbledore stood there, looking down at the three of us, squashed into the cupboard. We must be an entertaining sight.

"Dumbledore!" cried Rita Skeeter, with every appearance of delight, but the slight tightening of her neck muscles revealed how fake her persona was. "How are you?" she said, standing up and holding out one of her large, mannish hands to Dumbledore. "I hope you saw my piece over the summer about the International Confederation of Wizards' Conference?"

"Enchantingly nasty," said Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling. "I particularly enjoyed your description of me as an obsolete dingbat."

Rita Skeeter didn't look remotely abashed.

What an odd woman.

"I was just making the point that some of your ideas are a little old-fashioned, Dumbhedore, and that many wizards in the street -"

"I will be delighted to hear the reasoning behind the rudeness, Rita," said Dumbledore, with a courteous bow and a smile, "but I'm afraid we will have to discuss the matter later. The Weighing of the Wands is about to start, and it cannot take place if one of our champions is hidden in a broom cupboard."

I didn't another second, and was out of there before Dumbledore had finished talking, Harry not far behind. The other champions were now sitting in chairs near the door, and I sat down quickly next to Cedric, hooking up at the velvet-covered table, where four of the five judges were now sitting - Professor Karkaroff, Madame Maxime, Mr. Crouch, and Ludo Bagman. Rita Skeeter settled herself down in a corner; I saw her slip the parchment out of her bag again, spread it on her knee, suck the end of the Quick-Quotes Quill, and place it once more on the parchment.

"May I introduce Mr. Ollivander?" said Dumbledore, taking his place at the judges' table and talking to the champions. "He will be checking your wands to ensure that they are in good condition before the tournament."

I looked around, and with a jolt of surprise saw an old wizard with large, pale eyes standing quietly by the window. I had met Mr. Ollivander before - he was the wand-maker from whom I had bought my own wand over three years ago in Diagon Alley.

"Mademoiselle Delacour, could we have you first, please?" said Mr. Ollivander, stepping into the empty space in the middle of the room.

Fleur Delacour swept over to Mr. Ollivander and handed him her wand.

"Hmm..." he said.

He twirled the wand between his long fingers like a baton and it emitted a number of pink and gold sparks. Then he held it chose to his eyes and examined it carefully.

"Yes," he said quietly, "nine and a half inches... inflexible... rosewood... and containing... dear me..."

"An 'air from ze 'ead of a veela," said Fleur. "One of my grandmuzzer's."

So Fleur was part veela, I thought. Well, that explained a lot of things. I wondered if she turned into a demon when Leprechauns were around?

I'd have to warn Seamus.

"Yes," said Mr. Ollivander, "yes, I've never used veela hair myself, of course. I find it makes for rather temperamental wands... however, to each his own, and if this suits you..."

Mr. Ollivander ran his fingers along the wand,then he muttered, "_Orchideous_!" and a bunch of flowers burst from the wand tip.

"Very well, very well, it's in fine working order," said Mr. Ollivander, scooping up the flowers and handing them to Fleur with her wand. "Mr. Diggory, you next."

Fleur glided back to her seat, smiling at Cedric as he passed her.

"Ah, now, this is one of mine, isn't it?" said Mr. Ollivander, with much more enthusiasm, as Cedric handed over his wand. "Yes, I remember it well. Containing a single hair from the tail of a particularly fine male unicorn... must have been seventeen hands; nearly gored me with his horn after I plucked his tail. Twelve and a quarter inches... ash... pleasantly springy. It's in fine condition... You treat it regularly?"

"Polished it last night," said Cedric, grinning.

I looked down at my own wand; it wasn't perfect, maybe a few scratches here and there, but it's normal.

Mr. Ollivander sent a stream of silver smoke rings across the room from the tip of Cedric's wand, pronounced himself satisfied, and then said, "Mr. Krum, if you please."

Viktor Krum got up and slouched, round-shouldered and duck-footed, toward Mr. Ollivander. He thrust out his wand and stood scowling, with his hands in the pockets of his robes. I got the feeling Krum was either just naturally moody or slightly hung-over.

"Hmm," said Mr. Ollivander, "this is a Gregorovitch creation, unless I'm much mistaken? A fine wand-maker, though the styling is never quite what I... however..."

He lifted the wand and examined it minutely, turning it over and over before his eyes.

"Yes... hornbeam and dragon heartstring?" he shot at Krum, who nodded. "Rather thicker than one usually sees... quite rigid... ten and a quarter inches... Avis!"

The hornbeam wand let off a blast hike a gun, and a number of small, twittering birds flew out of the end and through the open window into the watery sunlight.

"Good," said Mr. Ollivander, handing Krum back his wand. "Mr. Lupin?"

I stepped forward and handed him my wand.

"Ah... yes, I remember this wand... thirteen inches... red wood and dragon Heartstring... correct?"

"Yup," I said. I had to admit, it was a beautiful wand; it was dark red in colour, with a finely engraved pattern around the handle that looked like a load of cobwebs.

He made blue flames shoot out the end of my wand, before handing it back to me, announcing it was in perfect condition.

"Which leaves...Mr. Potter."

Harry got to his feet and walked past me to Mr. Ollivander. He handed over his wand.

"Aaaah, yes," said Mr. Ollivander, his pale eyes suddenly gleaming. "Yes, yes, yes. How well I remember."

Mr. Ollivander spent much longer examining Harry's wand than anyone else's. Eventually, however, he made a fountain of wine shoot out of it, and handed it back to Harry, announcing that it was still in perfect condition.

"Thank you all," said Dumbledore, standing up at the judges' table. "You may go back to your lessons now - or perhaps it would be quicker just to go down to dinner, as they are about to end -"

Feeling that at last something had gone right today, I got up to leave, but the man with the black camera jumped up and cleared his throat, and I sat back down, already guessing what was going to happen.

"Photos, Dumbledore, photos!" cried Bagman excitedly. "All the judges and champions, what do you think, Rita?"

"Er - yes, let's do those first," said Rita Skeeter, whose eyes were upon me and Harry again. "And then perhaps some individual shots."

The photographs took a long time. Madame Maxime cast everyone else into shadow wherever she stood - which was amusing at first, but after ten minutes of repeatedly moving around, it began to get annoying - so eventually she had to sit while everyone else stood around her. Karkaroff kept twirling his goatee around his finger to give it an extra curl; Krum, whom I would have thought would have been used to this sort of thing, skulked, half-hidden, at the back of the group. The photographer seemed keenest to get Fleur at the front, but Rita Skeeter kept hurrying forward and dragging me and Harry into greater prominence. Then she insisted on separate shots of all the champions. They had me stand sideways, looking at the camera from the corner of my eyes, smirking, with my arms crossed over my chest. Then they added Harry to the shot, with his back to mine, standing the same way.

I skipped dinner that night, feeling too tired to do anything. I went up to bed, and noticed an owl waiting for me.

The first letter was from Moony:

**_Jack,_**

**_I'm not saying I'm surprised you got chosen to be a Hogwarts champion, with your and Harry's knack of trouble, but it is suspicious. BE CAREFUL. Do not speak to anyone alone, and stick with Harry._**

**_Good Luck._**

**_Dad._**

I smiled. I had expected a lecture to be honest, so was rather pleased and surprised with the result. I opened the second one.

PADFOOT!

**_Jack -_**

**_Make sure you are alone and in Gryffindor Tower at one o'clock in the morning on the 22nd of November. I need to speak with you, face-to-face._**

**_Padfoot._**

I smirked as the owl flew out the window. _Finally_, I thought, settling down in bed. _Something goes right_.


	11. Loathing Rita Skeeter

Life became even worse for me and Harry within the confines of the castle, for Rita Skeeter had published her piece about the Triwizard Tournament, and it had turned out to be not so much a report on the tournament as a highly colored life story of Harry and me. Much of the front page had been given over to the picture of us; the article (continuing on pages two, six, and seven) had been all about us, the names of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang champions (misspelled) had been squashed into the last line of the article, and Cedric hadn't been mentioned at all.

The article had appeared ten days ago, and I still got a sick, burning feeling of irritation in my stomach every time I thought about it. Rita Skeeter had reported us saying an awful lot of things that I couldn't remember ever saying in my life, let alone in that broom cupboard.

_**Harry - I suppose I get my strength from my parents. I know they'd be very proud of me if they could see me now... Yes, sometimes at night I still cry about them, I'm not ashamed to admit it... I know nothing will hurt me during the tournament, because they're watching over me...**_

But Rita Skeeter had gone even further than transforming our "er's" into long, sickly sentences. But is that where it ended? No: She had interviewed other people about us too.

_**Harry has at last found love at Hogwarts. His close friend, Colin Creevey, says that Harry is rarely seen out of the company of one Hermione Granger, a stunningly pretty Muggle-born girl who, like Harry, is one of the top students in the school.**_

And that's when the article started about me. Unsurprisingly, she had interviewed others about me:

_**Pansy Parkinson, a Slytherin girl, revealed that a fellow Slytherin Katherine Slade, has captured the young werewolf's heart. As many people know, it is not a natural occurrence for a Slytherin and a Gryffindor to spark a romance, and even less natural for a girl from a High-ranking family to be in the company of a werewolf. Could this school-girl crush turn into a tragic love story?**_

"Urgh!" I said, banging my head on the common room table. "I loathe Rita Skeeter!"

From the moment the article had appeared, me and Harry had to endure people - Slytherins, mainly - quoting it at us as we passed and making sneering comments.

"Want a hanky, Potter, in case you start crying in Transfiguration?"

"Since when have you been one of the top students in the school, Potter? Or is this a school you and Longbottom have set up together?"

Thankfully, after the first Slytherin had made a comment to me and ended up tied to one of the moving staircases, I hadn't been approached, but that didn't mean Kat got off easily.

* * *

I had fifteen minutes until one o'clock, when Sirius would come to Gryffindor tower. I smiled, silently pulling the covers off and placing my bare feet on the wooden floor. I yawned, standing up, then headed towards the door, careful not to make any noise.

I made it down to the common room and sat down on the couch in front of the fire, pulling my feet up under me to keep them warm.

My mind drifted, and next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake.

"Jack! Wake up!" It was Harry. I was suddenly wide awake. He got up from his kneeling position. "Check the fire." he told me, walking up the stairs to the boy's dormitories.

"Check the-?" I muttered, looking into the fire. "Woah."

Sirius's face was sticking out of the fire. He was beaming up at me.

"Padfoot?" I said with a grin. "What's up? How are you?"

"I'm fine," he said with a smile. "I was just talking to Harry, he said the first task is Dragons."

"Dragons?" I asked, an incredulous note to my voice. "What the actual Fuck?"

"I know," Sirius said. "I suppose you know what you're doing?"

"What I always do," I said with a grin. "Improvise!"


	12. The First Task

I went down to the Great Hall thinking about dragons the next morning. How had Harry found out about them? I would have to ask him later.

I found Hermione sitting next to Ginny.

I sat down next to them and pulled a plate of bacon and eggs towards me.

Harry came in and dragged Hermione away, with a quick "hello" to Ginny and me. It was time for me to go. I swallowed my last bite and followed after Harry and Hermione.

"Let's just try and keep you alive until Tuesday evening," Hermione was saying. "and then we can worry about Karkaroff"

"What about Karky?" I asked. I listened as Harry told me the not so entertaining story of Sirius's warning, and we started to walk.

We walked three times around the lake, trying all the way to think of a simple spell that would subdue a dragon. Nothing whatsoever occurred to us, so we retired to the library instead. Here, I pulled down every book I could find on dragons, and the three of us set to work searching through the large pile.

"_Talon-clipping by charms... treating scale-rot...'_ This is no good, this is for nutters like Hagrid who want to keep them healthy..."

"_Dragons are extremely difficult to slay, owing to the ancient magic that imbues their thick hides, which none but the most powerful spells can penetrate...'_ But Sirius said a simple one would do it..."

"Let's try some simple spellbooks, then," said Harry, throwing aside Men Who Love Dragons Too Much.

I grabbed the book Harry had just thrown away and started skimming through it.

"What are you doing?" Hermione asked.

"Looking to see if Hagrid's in here," I said seriously. When I couldn't find him, I threw the book down. "Nope, not in there."

He returned to the table with a pile of spellbooks, set them down, and began to flick through each in turn, Hermione whispering nonstop at his elbow. Quite annoying actually.

"Well, there are Switching Spells... but what's the point of Switching it? Unless you swapped its fangs for wine-gums or something that would make it less dangerous...The trouble is, like that book said, not much is going to get through a dragon's hide... I'd say Transfigure it, but something that big, you really haven't got a hope, I doubt even Professor McGonagall... unless you're supposed to put the spell on yourself? Maybe to give yourself extra powers? But they're not simple spells, I mean, we haven't done any of those in class, I only know about them because I've been doing O.W.L. practice papers..."

"Hermione," I said, slamming my head on to the table. "Please _isht_ for a moment."

I didn't know what I meant by _'isht_,' but Hermione got the message and ceased talking. But all that happened when Hermione fell silent was that my brain filled with a sort of blank buzzing, which didn't seem to allow room for concentration. I stared hopelessly down the index of Basic Hexes for the Busy and Vexed. Instant scalping... but dragons had no hair...pepper breath... that would probably increase a dragon's firepower... horn tongue... just what I needed, to give it an extra weapon...

"Oh no, he's back again, why can't he read on his stupid ship?" said Hermione irritably as Viktor Krum slouched in, cast a surly look over at us, and settled himself in a distant corner with a pile of books. "Come on, we'll go back to the common room... his fan club'll be here in a moment, twittering away..."

And sure enough, as we left the library, a gang of girls tiptoed past us, one of them wearing a Bulgaria scarf tied around her waist.

* * *

The next morning, I was bouncing with excitement. Literally.

When we were in the Great Hall heading to lunch, Professor McGonagall was hurrying over to us. Lots of people were watching.

"Potter, Lupin, the champions have to come down onto the grounds now... You have to get ready for your first task."

"Okay," said Harry, standing up, his fork falling onto his plate with a clatter. I leapt up and we followed Professor Mcgonagall to where we would be doing our first task.

Fleur Delacour was sitting in a corner on a how wooden stool. She didn't look nearly as composed as usual, but rather pale and clammy. Viktor Krum looked even surlier than usual, which I supposed was his way of showing nerves. Cedric was pacing up and down. When we entered, Cedric gave us a small smile, which I returned. Even though Cedric's dad annoyed me greatly, Cedric himself seemed okay.

"Harry! Jack! Good-o!" said Bagman happily, looking around at us. "Come in, come in, make yourself at home!"

Bagman looked somehow like a slightly overblown cartoon figure, standing amid all the pale-faced champions. He was wearing his old Wasp robes again.

"Well, now we're all here - time to fill you in!" said Bagman brightly. "When the audience has assembled, I'm going to be offering each of you this bag" - he held up a small sack of purple silk and shook it at us - "from which you will each select a small model of the thing you are about to face! There are different - er - varieties, you see. And I have to tell you something else too... ah, yes... your task is to collect the golden egg!"

I glanced around. Cedric had nodded once, to show that he understood Bagman's words, and then started pacing around the tent again; he looked slightly green. Fleur Delacour and Krum hadn't reacted at all. Perhaps they thought they might be sick if they opened their mouths; that was certainly how Harry looked. But they, at least, had volunteered for this...

And in no time at all, hundreds upon hundreds of pairs of feet could be heard passing the tent, their owners talking excitedly, laughing, joking. Yeah, it's all good for them, they get to watch several school pupils get turned into dragon chow.

And then - it seemed like about a second later to me - Bagman was opening the neck of the purple silk sack.

"Ladies first," he said, offering it to Fleur.

She put a shaking hand inside the bag and drew out a tiny, perfect model of a dragon - a Welsh Green, one I recognized from the books we had been reading. It had the number two around its neck. And I knew, by the fact that Fleur showed no sign of surprise, but rather a determined resignation, that Madame Maxime had told her what was coming.

The same held true for Krum. He pulled out a scarlet dragon. It had a number three around its neck. He didn't even blink, just sat back down and stared at the ground.

Cedric put his hand into the bag, and out came a blueish-gray dragon, the number one tied around its neck. I gave him a sympathetic look.

I went next, sticking my hand into the bag. My hands closed around something small and scaly, which bit at my fingers. I pulled my hand out, opening my hand, I saw a minuscule model of a scaly black dragon, with multicouloured eyes and a more muscled body than the others I'd seen so far, with a number five tied around it's neck. It stretched its wings as I looked down at it, and bared its minuscule fangs.

Cute?

Harry put his hand into the silk bag and pulled out the Hungarian Horntail - which I had also remembered - and the number four.

"Well, there you are!" said Bagman. "You have each pulled out the dragon you will face, and the numbers refer to the order in which you are to take on the dragons, do you see? Now, I'm going to have to leave you in a moment, because I'm commentating. Mr. Diggory, you're first, just go out into the enclosure when you hear a whistle, all right? Now... Harry... could I have a quick word? Outside?"

I sat down next to Cedric - seeing as my friend had just been taken hostage by the giant wasp man - who looked skeptical.

"You'll be fine," I said. "Just calm down and chill."

"You got this figured out?" he asked me, looking concerned.

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah..."

A whistle was blown somewhere. Cedric turned even more green and stood up, walking out of the tent as Harry walked in. He took Cedric's seat.

"You okay?" he asked, looking at me as I listened to the sounds of the crowd beyond the tent.

"Yeah, you?" I said.

"I suppose..."

"Good for us."

One by one, Fleur left, followed by Krum, and then finally, Harry had to leave.

"Good luck!" I called, smiling. He forced a smile, then walked out.

I was alone. I blocked out all noise and cleared my mind, trying to focus. I had a horrible scared feeling in my gut, and I hated that feeling.

I heard a whistle being blown, and I straightened up. My joints gave an audible click, and I wished I spent more time running instead of sitting today.

There were hundreds and hundreds of faces staring down at me from stands. And there was the Dragon, at the other end of the enclosure, crouched low over its clutch of eggs, its wings half-furled, her evil, mulicoloured eyes upon me, a monstrous, scaly, black lizard, thrashing its tail, heaving yard-long gouge marks in the hard ground. The crowd was making a great deal of noise, but whether friendly or not, I didn't know or care. It was time to do what I had to do... to focus my mind, entirely and absolutely, upon the thing that was my only chance.

I stopped in the middle of the enclosure, keeping eye contact with the Dragon. I took a deep breath.

Another whistle was blown, and I felt a rush of adrenaline flow through me. I sprang into action, running as fast as I could, trying not to fall on the rocks as I phased in mid flight. I heard the crowd screaming, as I hit the ground running, feeling the dozens of eyes upon me.

I crept along the large rock the shortest distance away from the dragon, and jumped out from it as a blast of fire surged at me. My tail caught fire, and I growled, running at top speed and, thankfully, the wind put it out, and I focused on my task again.

I had to leap out of the way as another surge of fire was aimed at me, and, next minute, a huge black thing was coming towards me. It took me a second to realize this was the dragon's tail, but by then, it was too late.

The huge muscled tail collided with me, and the force of it made me fly thirty feet through the air. I stopped when m body smashed against some rocks, and I heard the crowd gasp. But I jumped to my four paws, back aching but healing, and took off as fast as I dared incase I needed to do an emergency break.

I stopped, and took a deep breath, searching for the golden egg. I saw it, and took off in zig-zags, avoiding various rocks and other things. I narrowly missed a few jets of fire, the flames singing the tips of my fur.

I stopped running in time not to tread on the other eggs. I reached around them and speedily but gently picked up my golden egg in my jaws, just as a jet of fire surrounded me.

I howled in pain, jumping in and out in an attempt to stop the agonizing burning on my skin. I nearly swallowed my egg as I tumbled down onto the hard rocks, and I heard the crowd gasp and scream.

I sped away from the dragon and dropped to the ground, spitting out my egg and rolling over in an attempt to extinguish the flames on my body. I shifted back, laying on my back and panting.

Teams of wizards ran out to subdue the dragon, and another helping me limp out of the field. The whole crowd was on their feet, but I was too busy concentrating on the pain to notice much else. I limped over to where Harry and Ron (who must've made up. Thank God!) were sitting while carrying my egg.

"Merlin!" said Ron, catching a glimpse of me.

"Close, but it's just me," I said, smirking in pain as I looked down at my burned arms and legs. I was pretty sure my hair was singed as well. "I'll be fine in a while, depending on the burns. Thankyou Lycan genes."

"You should be in bed." Harry said.

"I'll be fine Harry, trust me. Here, Ron, get a picture of the two champions after the first task!" I handed him my camera I'd bought off Creevey.

He smirked. Me and Harry draped our arms round eachother's shoulders. We smiled, and the camera flashed. I would have this moment forever. I didn't care that I was burned from head to toe, I felt completely normal and where I belonged as I got pictures with the other champions and Ron and Hermione.

* * *

That evening, when I entered the Gryffindor common room it exploded with cheers and yells again. There were mountains of cakes and flagons of pumpkin juice and butterbeer on every surface; Lee Jordan had let off some Filibuster's Fireworks, so that the air was thick with stars and sparks; and Dean Thomas, who was very good at drawing, had put up some impressive new banners, most of which depicted Harry zooming around the Horntail's head on his Firebolt, though a couple showed Cedric with his head on fire, and a giant wolf running on the ground - me!.

I helped myself to food; I had almost forgotten what it was like to feel properly hungry, and sat down with Harry, Ron and Hermione. I couldn't believe how happy I felt; I'd gotten through the first task, and I wouldn't have to face the second one for three months.

"Blimey, this is heavy," said Lee Jordan, picking up the golden egg, which I had left on a table, and weighing it in his hands. "Open it, Jack, go on! Let's just see what's inside it!"

"They're supposed to work out the clue on their own," Hermione said swiftly. "It's in the tournament rules..."

"We were supposed to work out how to get past the dragons on our own too," Harry muttered, so only Hermione and I could hear him, and she grinned rather guiltily.

"Yeah, go on, Jack, open it!" several people echoed.

Lee passed me the egg, and I dug my fingernails into the groove that ran all the way around it and prised it open.

It was hollow and completely empty - but the moment I opened it, the most horrible noise, a loud and screechy wailing, filled the room. I clamped my hands over my ears, dropping my egg and nearly passing out.

"Shut it!" Fred bellowed, his hands over his ears.

"What was that?" said Seamus, staring at the egg as Harry slammed it shut. "Sounded like a banshee... Maybe you've got to get past one of those next!"

"Ow!" I growled, shaking my head sharply as I climbed back into my seat.

"It was someone being tortured!" said Neville, who had gone very white and spilled sausage rolls all over the floor. "You're going to have to fight the Cruciatus Curse!"

"Don't be a prat, Neville, that's illegal," said George. "They wouldn't use the Cruciatus Curse on the champions. I thought it sounded a bit like Percy singing... maybe you've got to attack him while he's in the shower."

I shivered.

"Want a jam tart, Hermione?" said Fred. I raised an eyebrow. If a Weasley Twin offered you anything, under no circumstances should you accept it.

Hermione looked doubtfully at the plate he was offering her. Fred grinned.

"It's all right," he said. "I haven't done anything to them. It's the custard creams you've got to watch -"

Neville, who had just bitten into a custard cream, choked and spat it out. Fred laughed.

"Just my little joke, Neville..."

Sure Fred. Whatever you say.

Hermione took a jam tart. Then she said, "Did you get all this from the kitchens, Fred?"

"Yep," said Fred, grinning at her. He put on a high-pitched squeak and imitated a house-elf. "'anything we can get you, sir, anything at all!' They're dead helpful... get me a roast ox if I said I was peckish."

"How do you get in there?" Hermione said in an innocently casual sort of voice, but I saw through it straight away.

"Easy," said Fred, "concealed door behind a painting of a bowl of fruit. Just tickle the pear, and it giggles and -" He stopped and looked suspiciously at her. "Why?"

"Nothing," said Hermione quickly.

"Going to try and lead the house-elves out on strike now, are you?" said George. "Going to give up all the leaflet stuff and try and stir them up into rebellion?"

Several people chortled. Hermione didn't answer.

"Don't you go upsetting them and telling them they've got to take clothes and salaries!" said Fred warningly. "You'll put them off their cooking!"

Just then, Neville caused a slight diversion by turning into a large canary.

"Oh - sorry, Neville!" Fred shouted over all the laughter. "I forgot - it was the custard creams we hexed -"

Within a minute, however, Neville had molted, and once his feathers had fallen off, he reappeared looking entirely normal. He even joined in laughing.

"Canary Creams!" Fred shouted to the excitable crowd. "George and I invented them - seven Sickles each, a bargain!"

It was nearly one in the morning when I finally went up to the dormitory with Harry, Ron, Neville, Seamus, and Dean. Before I pulled the curtains of my four-poster shut. I set my tiny model of the dragon on the table next to my bed, where it yawned, curled up, and closed its eyes. I pulled the hangings on my four-poster closed, they were all right, really, dragons. As long as they weren't trying to barbeque me.


	13. Slytherins Are Awkward

"Potter! Weasley! Lupin! Will you pay attention?"

Professor McGonagall's irritated voice cracked like a whip through the Transfiguration class on Thursday, the three of us jumped and looked up.

It was the end of the lesson; we had finished our work; the guinea fowl we had been changing into guinea pigs had been shut away in a large cage on Professor McGonagall's desk (Neville's still had feathers); we had copied down the homework from the blackboard. The bell was due to ring at any moment, and me, Harry and Ron had been having a sword fight with a couple of Fred and George's fake wands at the back of the class. We looked up, Ron holding a tin parrot, Harry, a rubber haddock and me a banana.

"Now that Potter, Weasley and Lupin have been kind enough to act their age," said Professor McGonagall, with an angry look at the three of us as the head of Harry's haddock drooped and fell silently to the floor - Ron's parrot's beak had severed it moments before - "I have something to say to you all.

"The Yule Ball is approaching - a traditional part of the Triwizard Tournament and an opportunity for us to socialize with our foreign guests. Now, the ball will be open only to fourth years and above - although you may invite a younger student if you wish -"

Lavender Brown let out a shrill giggle. Parvati Patil nudged her hard in the ribs, her face working furiously as she too fought not to giggle. They both looked around at me. Professor McGonagall ignored them, which I thought was distinctly unfair, as she had just told off me, Harry and Ron.

"Dress robes will be worn," Professor McGonagall continued, "and the ball will start at eight o'clock on Christmas Day, finishing at midnight in the Great Hall. Now then -"

Professor McGonagall stared deliberately around the class.

"The Yule Ball is of course a chance for us all to - er - let our hair down," she said, in a disapproving voice.

I groaned and slammed my head down on the desk.

"But that does NOT mean," Professor McGonagall went on, "that we will be relaxing the standards of behavior we expect from Hogwarts students. I will be most seriously displeased if a Gryffindor student embarrasses the school in any way."

The bell rang, and there was the usual scuffle of activity as everyone packed their bags and swung them onto their shoulders. I was just about to leave when Professor McGonagall called above the noise, "Potter, Lupin - a word, if you please."

The two of us glanced at eachother and headed up towards her desk. Professor McGonagall waited until the rest of the class had gone, and then said, "Boys, the champions and their partners -"

"What partners?" Harry asked, frowning. I didn't like where this was going.

"Your partners for the Yule Ball, Potter," she said coldly. "Your dance partners."

I groaned again.

"Dance partners?" He went red. "I don't dance," he said quickly.

"Oh yes, you do," said Professor McGonagall irritably. "That's what I'm telling you. Traditionally, the champions and their partners open the ball."

"I'm not dancing," I said.

"It is traditional," said Professor McGonagall firmly. "You are a Hogwarts champion, and you will do what is expected of you as a representative of the school. So make sure you get yourself a partner, Lupin."

"But - I don't -"

"You heard me, Lupin," said Professor McGonagall in a very final sort of way.

"Fine." I crossed my arms. "But don't expect anything special."

* * *

A curly-haired third-year Ravenclaw girl to whom I had never spoken in my life, walked up to me while I was eating breakfast with Harry and Ron.

"Will you go to the ball with me?" she asked confidently.

I raised an eyebrow at her, and she walked off without waiting for an answer. Wordlessley, I went back to my bacon.

"Are you mad?" asked Ron, staring after the girl. "She was good looking mate!"

I shrugged, putting a piece of bacon between my teeth and ripping it apart.

"Do you not want a date or something?" asked Seamus, who had just witnessed the girl's awkwardness and joined us.

I sighed. "Guys, I'm a werewolf cross-breed, no one should be asking me. And it might interest you to know that I'm planning asking someone anyway."

* * *

The next day, a total of seven girls asked me to the ball, so I decided enough was enough, and I was going to ask the person I would be going with anyway.

Walking over to the Slytherin table was not a fun experience, and it certainly didn't win me any cheerful glances. I could feel my own house's eyes on me as I casually sat down and grabbed a goblet of pumpkin juice, cheerfully ignoring all the glares sent my way.

"What a pleasant surprise," Katherine said, grinning as she turned around to see me next to her.

I shrugged. "It's how I roll." I explained as I put the goblet down.

"What do you think you're doing, mutt?" asked Malfoy from somewhere to down the bench.

"Malfoy, either you shut up, or I shut you up," I said, my eyes flashing gold. "I suggest you shut it, because my way involves a lot of pain on your behalf." Silence. "Thankyou." I turned back to Kat, who looked amused. "Straight to it then, because I can actually taste the hostility. Will you go to the ball with me?"

She grinned, violet eyes flashing. "I thought you'd never ask."

I rolled my eyes. "Your friends scare me." I said sarcastically, getting up and glancing at all the Slytherins, who were glaring at me, and Kat, who was smiling. "Seriously," I said, leaning down. "You'd make a good Gryffindor."

She snorted. "Nah, I'm more cunning than straightforward idiotic."

I rolled my eyes. I found it amusing that, unlike any other Slytherin, Kat seemed to be kind to the other houses.

"Well then," I said, leaning down closer. "It's a good thing that's what I am."

I lightly pecked her on the cheek before stealing a Yorkshire Pudding off Malfoy's plate. Before he could curse me, I was out of there.


	14. The Ball

I met up with Harry, Ron and Hermione in the common room, and we went down to breakfast together. We spent most of the morning in Gryffindor Tower, where everyone was enjoying their presents, then returned to the Great Hall for a magnificent lunch, which included at least a hundred turkeys and Christmas puddings, and large piles of Cribbage's Wizarding Crackers.

We went out onto the grounds in the afternoon; the snow was untouched except for the deep channels made by the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students on their way up to the castle. Hermione chose to watch me, Harry and the Weasleys' snowball fight rather than join in, and at five o'clock said she was going back upstairs to get ready for the ball.

"What, you need three hours?" said Ron, looking at her incredulously and paying for his lapse in concentration when a large snowball, thrown by me, hit him hard on the side of the head. "Who're you going with?" he yelled after Hermione, but she just waved and disappeared up the stone steps into the castle.

There was no Christmas tea today, as the ball included a feast, so at seven o'clock, when it had become hard for those not blessed with werewolf sight to aim properly, we abandoned our snowball fight and trooped back to the common room. The Fat Lady was sitting in her frame with her friend Violet from downstairs, both of them extremely tipsy, empty boxes of chocolate liqueurs littering the bottom other picture.

"Lairy fights, that's the one!" she giggled when we gave the password, and she swung forward to let us inside.

Me, Harry, Ron, Seamus, Dean, and Neville changed into dress robes up in our dormitory, all of them looking very self-conscious, but none as much as Ron, who surveyed himself in the long mirror in the corner with an appalled look on his face. There was just no getting around the fact that his robes looked more like a dress than anything else. In a desperate attempt to make them look more manly, he used a Severing Charm on the ruff and cuffs. It worked fairly well; at least he was now lace-free, although he hadn't done a very neat job, and the edges still looked depressingly frayed as the boys set off downstairs.

I was wearing a black shirt with a white collar and black pants, along with new shoes and a black tie. I wore black dress robes over the top, which stopped so you could see half of my shirt on my chest, and my hair was stubbornly sticking up, but I looked fine.

"I still can't work out how you two got the best-looking girls in the year," muttered Dean to Ron and Harry.

"Animal magnetism," said Ron gloomily, pulling stray threads out of his cuffs. I snorted

The common room looked strange, full of people wearing different colours instead of the usual mass of black. Parvati was waiting for Harry at the foot of the stairs. She was in robes of shocking pink, with her long dark plait braided with gold, and gold bracelets glimmering at her wrists.

I didn't waste any time in the common room, instead waiting for Kat at the entrance to the great Hall. As soon as I caught her scent, I spun round.

She looked beautiful.

Her hair cascaded down like a black waterfall and her violet eyes glittered in the candlelight. She was wearing a dark red dress and makeup.

"Wow." I said, taking her hand. "You look amazing."

"Thanks." she said, grinning. "You look very nice."

I grinned and wrapped my arm around her waist, steering us out of the way of the staring faces.

"You really do look beautiful." I said again, as we walked to Professor McGonagall.

Once everyone was in the hall, McGonagall told the champions and our partners to get in line in pairs and to follow her. We did so, and everyone in the great hall applauded as we entered and started walking up toward a huge round table at the top of the hall where the judges were sitting.

The walls of the Hall had all been covered in sparkling silver frost, with hundreds of garlands of mistletoe and ivy crossing the starry black ceiling. The House tables had vanished; instead, there were about a hundred smaller, lantern-lit ones, each seating about a dozen people.

Kat seemed to be enjoying herself; she was beaming me, and I smiled back at her. I caught sight of Ron and Padma as he neared a table. Ron was watching Hermione pass with narrowed eyes, who looked extremely beautiful and with Viktor Krum.

Dumbledore smiled happily as we approached the top table, but Karkaroff wore an expression remarkably like Ron's as he watched Krum and Hermione draw nearer. Bastard. Ludo Bagman, tonight in robes of bright purple with large yellow stars, was clapping as enthusiastically as any of the students; and Madame Maxime, who had changed her usual uniform of black satin for a flowing gown of lavender silk, was applauding them politely. But Mr. Crouch, I suddenly realized, was not there. The fifth seat at the table was occupied by Percy Weasley.

Oh joy.

Kat and I sat at the end of the table, as far away from Percy and his babble as I could get.

* * *

When all the food had been consumed, Dumbledore stood up and asked the students to do the same. Then, with a wave of his wand, all the tables and chairs zoomed back along the white walls, leaving the floor clear and then he conjured a raised platform into existence along the right wall. A set of drums, several guitars, a flute, a cello and some bagpipes were set upon it.

The Weird Sisters now trooped up onto the stage to wildly enthusiastic applause; they were all extremely hairy and dressed in black robes that had been artfully ripped and torn. They picked up their instruments, and me, who had been so interested in watching them that I had almost forgotten what was coming, suddenly realized that the lanterns on all the other tables had gone out, and that the other champions and their partners were standing up.

"Shall we?" I asked Kat, holding out my hand.

"We shall." she said enthusiastically. I led her onto the dancefloor.

I placed one around her waist, and was used the other one to hold her hand.

Me and Kat were more animated than the other champions, as we slowly revolved in circles. I pulled Kat close, resting my chin on her head, and very soon many of the students too had come onto the dance floor, so that the champions were no longer the center of attention. Dumbledore was waltzing with Madame Maxime. He was so dwarfed by her that the top of his pointed hat barely tickled her chin; however, she moved very gracefully for a woman so large. Mad-Eye Moody was doing an extremely ungainly two-step with Professor Sinistra, who was nervously avoiding his wooden leg.

I heard the final, quavering note from the bagpipe. The Weird Sisters stopped playing, applause filled the hall once more. The Weird Sisters struck up a new song, which was much faster. I pulled Kat into my arms and we danced, laughing and joking, for the remainder of the night.


	15. It's A Good Thing Dogs Can Swim

I sank up to my nose in the boiling water of the bath, sighing contentedly through my nose. I glared at my golden egg through the corner of my eyes, wondering what message it held inside.

I sighed once again through my nose. I stretched, stupidly knocking my golden egg into the water. Well done Jacky! I thought. Bubbles started to rise up from where it had just gone under. I groaned, and ducked under.

I had expected to hear the shrilly scream once again, but I was wrong! Music floated to my ears!

_Come seek us where our voices sound,_

_We cannot sing above the ground,_

_And while you re searching, ponder this:_

_Wove taken what you'll sorely miss,_

_An hour long you'll have to look,_

_And to recover what we took,_

_But past an hour- the prospect's black,_

_Too late, it's gone, it wont come back_

I sprang upwards, flinging my head back to remove my hair from my face once I had resurfaced with a gasp of air. I had left my egg at the bottom of the water. I was a werewolf, not a freaking _mermaid_!

Hold on...

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Hermione and I researched Gillyweed - it was a weed, duh - and it allowed the user to breathe underwater for exactly an hour.

I had stayed after Herbology to talk to Professor Sprout, and she had given me some Gillyweed! I was ready!

I was walking through the corridors of Hogwarts, a slight spring in my step. I hadn't talked to Cedric in a while, so I decided I would go and wish him good luck for tomorrow, the day of the second task.

I walked into the library.

Harry was browsing the shelves, obviously looking for something to help him. I sighed.

I snuck up behind him, and whispered "Gillyweed."

He jumped, and turned to face me. Confused.

"Pardon?"

"Gillyweed." I repeated. "That's what I'm using. Gillyweed. Hermione told me you'd figured out the egg, but not how to - ya know - breathe underwater. Gillyweed is the answer my bespectacled friend, but I don't know if Professor Sprout will have any left -"

"I could help." a voice suddenly said from behind Harry.

"Neville!" I said, frowning. "You heard nothing I said to Harry, got it?"

"R-right." his eyes widened. I spun round and walked away from the two, letting them discuss Gillyweed. I sighed walking out of the library again.

"Boo!" someone said in my ear, making me jump. Usually, I could hear people coming a mile away, but, since I hadn't been concentrating, I leapt away from the noise, falling and landing on the floor.

"Oh - geez - Sorry!" It was Cedric. "Here, let me help..."

He held out a hand, and I gladly took it, pulling myself up.

"Thanks." I said. "So - uh - good luck for tomorrow." We started walking to the entrance hall. "I'll be rooting' for ya."

He laughed. "You're in the competition, remember?"

"What?" I gasped. "I was never told this!" I laughed along with him.

* * *

The next morning, I awoke to find Ron had not come to bed that night. Turns out Hermione had disappeared too, and Harry was in the library. I had a few hours before the second task, so I wore swimming trunks under my robes and went into the Great Hall.

No Harry, Ron, Hermione or Kat. The only person who I could talk to was Cedric.

"Hello Diggory," I said, joining him at the Hufflepuff table, ignoring the odd looks I got whenever I sat at a table that wasn't my own - which was quite often now a days. "You ready for the task?"

"Yeah," he said enthusiastically. "You?"

"Definitely." I grinned, tapping the tin of Gillyweed in my robes pocket where I was keeping it. "Wanna make a little bet Diggory?" I asked, grinning.

"Go for it, Lupin," he said.

"Okay," I thought. "Five Galleons says I have more points than you by the end of this task." this was pretty good, since we were tied.

"You're on." he said, and we shook on it.

We stood around, waiting for Harry.

"There he is!" I said, spotting him. He rushed over, as many heads turned to him.

"ONE!" Bagman called. I placed the Gillyweed in my mouth, chewing it. Ugh, disgusting.

"TWO!" I swallowed it and shivered.

"THREE!"

The whistle echoed shrilly in the cold, still air, hurting my ears.

Without looking at what the other champions were doing, I leaped into the icy water, a shudder rippling through me at the cold. I could breathe underwater - thank God! - and my hands and feet were now webbed, and I had gills under my ears - ah, that explains the 'breathing underwater' thing. I swam in two fast circles before taking off into the water at the speed of a jet.

I shoved through the water, glad for my werewolf senses. I could see every detail of everything that flashed by. I stopped in a field of seagrass, looking around. I forced all of my concentration to hearing, listening for anything. But the water that enveloped me made everything muffled and confusing.

I could hear singing far off to the right, and took off. But before I could get far, something grabbed onto my leg. I turned, a load of bubbles escaping my mouth of what was supposed to be a growl. I thrashed and kicked, trying to get the Grindlow off my leg. It sunk it's teeth into my leg, and that was the last straw. I put all my power into my right foot as I kicked it with all my strength - which was a lot.

I sped off through the water, towards the singing.

"_An hour long you'll have to look_

_To recover what we took..."_

The music was becoming louder and clearer as I sped like a rocket through the cool waters. I smiled, but my face fell when I saw there were merpeople here.

"_Your time's half gone, so tarry not,_

_Lest what you seek stays here to rot."_

My heart jumped into my throat. Stay here to rot?

A cluster of crude stone dwellings stained with algae loomed suddenly out of the gloom on all sides. Here and there at the dark windows, I saw faces... faces that would possibly haunt my nightmares forever.

The merpeople had grayish skin and long, wild, dark green hair. Their eyes were yellow, as were their broken teeth, and they wore thick ropes of pebbles around their necks. They leered at me as I swam past; one or two of them emerged from their caves to watch me better, their powerful, silver fish tails beating the water, spears clutched in their hands.

I sped on, staring around, and soon the dwellings became more numerous; there were gardens of weed around some of them, and I even saw a pet grindylow tied to a stake outside one door. Merpeople were emerging on all sides now, watching me eagerly, pointing at my webbed hands and gills, talking behind their hands to one another. I sped around a corner and a very strange sight met my eyes.

A whole crowd of merpeople was floating in front of the houses that lined what looked like a mer-version of a village square. A choir of merpeople was singing in the middle, calling the champions toward them, and behind them rose a crude sort of statue; a gigantic merperson hewn from a boulder. Five people were bound tightly to the tail of the stone merperson.

Ron was tied between Hermione and Cho Chang. There was also a girl who looked no older than eight, whose clouds of silvery hair made Harry feel sure that she was Fleur Delacour's sister, and then there was Kat. My stomach dropped and I sped up. All five of them appeared to be in a very deep sleep. Their heads were lolling onto their shoulders, and fine streams of bubbles kept issuing from their mouths.

I sped toward the hostages, half expecting the merpeople to lower their spears and charge at me, but they did nothing. The ropes of weed tying the hostages to the statue were thick, slimy, and very strong.

I turned to Kat. I knew she was for me. I tried 'Relashio', but it didn't work. I grabbed the rope, and slowly began to rip it off.

I heard the sound of water being dispersed around me and smiled at once; Harry!

I waved to him, and he waved back. He looked at the hostages, then dived to the lake bottom and picked up a particularly jagged rock, returning to the statue. I turned back to my own task, ripping through the ropes. Finally, after several minutes' hard work, both me and Harry had set them free. Ron floated, unconscious, a few inches above the lake bottom, drifting a little in the ebb of the water, but I held Kat in my arms, not letting her go.

Me and Harry looked around. There was no sign of the other champions. Why can't they hurry up? I wanted to stay, but Kat's, Ron's and Harry's safety was my first priority.

Harry and I turned back to Hermione, he raised the jagged rock, and began to hack at her bindings too -

At once, several pairs of strong gray hands seized us. Half a dozen mermen were pulling the both of us away from Hermione, shaking their green-haired heads, and laughing.

"You take your own hostage," one of them said to us. "Leave the others..."

"No way!" I said furiously - but only two large bubbles came out.

"Your task is to retrieve your own friend... leave the others..."

Harry yelled something, gesturing toward Hermione, an enormous silver bubble emerging soundlessly from his lips.

Cho's head was on Hermione's shoulder; the small silver-haired girl was ghostly green and pale. I struggled to fight off the mermen, but they laughed harder than ever, holding me back. I looked wildly around. Where were the other champions? Would we have time to take Ron and Kat to the surface and come back down for Hermione and the others? Would we be able to find them again? Harry looked down at his watch to see how much time was left - it had stopped working.

But then the merpeople around us pointed excitedly over my head. I looked up and saw Cedric swimming toward us. There was an enormous bubble around his head, which made his features look oddly wide and stretched.

"Got lost!" he mouthed, looking panic-stricken. "Fleur and Krum're coming now!"

Feeling enormously relieved, I watched Cedric pull a knife out of his pocket -that would have been a smart idea - and cut Cho free. He pulled her upward and out of sight.

I looked around, waiting. Where were Fleur and Krum? Time was getting short, and according to the song, the hostages would be lost after an hour...

The merpeople started screeching animatedly. Those holding me loosened their grip, staring behind us. I turned and saw something monstrous cutting through the water toward us: a human body in swimming trunks with the head of a shark... It was Krum. He appeared to have transfigured himself - but badly.

The shark-man swam straight to Hermione and began snapping and biting at her ropes; the trouble was that Krum's new teeth were positioned very awkwardly for biting anything smaller than a dolphin, and I was quite sure that if Krum wasn't careful, he was going to rip Hermione in half. Darting forward. Harry hit Krum hard on the shoulder and held up the jagged stone. Krum seized it and began to cut Hermione free. Within seconds, he had done it; he grabbed Hermione around the waist, and without a backward glance, began to rise rapidly with her toward the surface.

"You're welcome!" I tried to yell, but once again, only bubbles came out

Now what? I thought desperately. If I could be sure that Fleur was coming... But still no sign. There was nothing to be done except...

I let go of Kat snatched up the stone, which Krum had dropped, but the mermen now closed in around Ron, Kat and the little girl, shaking their heads at me. Harry pulled out his wand.

"Get out of the way!" I growled.

Only bubbles flew out of my mouth, but I had the distinct impression that the mermen had understood me.

They didn't move.

I felt a shudder and a convulsion ripple through me, and I exploded. At once, I was a black wolf. It was a completely weird feeling being a mer-wolf. My fur swirled around me and I kicked my paws, staying upright. I could still breathe, but it was harder now since my organs were larger.

They scattered. I darted forward and began to bite at the ropes binding the small girl to the statue with my sharp teeth, and at last she was free. Harry seized the little girl around the waist, grabbed the neck of Ron's robes, and kicked off from the bottom. I grabbed Kat carefully by the collar and swam after Harry, my giant paws pushing me off from the bottom.

It was very slow work. Harry could no longer use his webbed hands to propel himself forward; he worked his flippers furiously, but Ron and Fleur's sister were dragging him back down... I swam close to Harry and nudged him. He got the message and grabbed onto my fur. Now we were going moderately faster, I fixed my eyes skyward, though I knew we must still be very deep, the water above us was so dark...

Merpeople were rising with us. I could see them swirling around me with ease, watching me struggle through the water... Would they pull us back down to the depths when the time was up? Did they perhaps eat humans? I knew if they tried, I would send Harry up with Kat and the others and fight them off myself. My legs were seizing up with the effort to keep swimming; my large shoulders were aching horribly with the effort of dragging Harry,Ron and the girl, and my jaw was aching from holding on to Kat's robes, but there was no way in hell I would let go.

I was drawing breath with extreme difficulty.I was becoming very aware of how wet the water was in my mouth... yet the darkness was definitely thinning now... I could see daylight above me.

I kicked my paws hard... water was flooding through my mouth into my lungs... I was starting to feel dizzy, but I knew light and air were only ten feet above us... I had to get there...

Me and Harry kicked our legs so hard and fast it felt as though my muscles screaming in protest; my very brain felt waterlogged, I couldn't breathe, I needed oxygen, I had to keep going, I couldn't stop -

And then I felt my head break the surface of the lake; wonderful, cold, clear air was making my wet fur ruffle; I gulped it down, my large tongue lolling out the side of my mouth in a very dog-like fashion, feeling as though I had never breathed properly before, and, panting, pulled Ron, Harry, Kat and the little girl up with me. All around me, wild, green-haired heads were emerging out of the water with us, but they were smiling at us.

The crowd in the stands was making a great deal of noise; shouting and screaming, they all seemed to be on their feet; I had the impression they thought that Kat, Ron and the little girl might be dead, but they were wrong... all three of had opened their eyes; the girl looked scared and confused, but Ron merely expelled a great spout of water, blinked in the bright light, turned to me and Harry and said, "Wet, this, isn't it?" Then he spotted Fleur's sister. "What did you bring her for?"

"Fleur didn't turn up, we couldn't leave her," Harry panted, seeing as I couldn't talk.

"You prats," said Ron, "you didn't take that song thing seriously, did you? Dumbledore wouldn't have let any of us drown!"

"The song said -"

"It was only to make sure you got back inside the time limit!" said Ron. "I hope you didn't waste time down there acting the heros!"

I felt both stupid and annoyed. It was all very well for Ron; he'd been asleep, he hadn't felt how eerie it was down in the lake, surrounded by spear-carrying merpeople who'd looked more than capable of murder.

"C'mon," Harry said shortly, "help me with her, I don't think she can swim very well."

I nudged Harry again, gesturing for him to grab on. Harry hoisted the little girl helped Kat onto my back and he and Ron clung to each side of my neck. They all clung onto me as I swam at twice the speed they could, back toward the bank where the judges stood watching, twenty merpeople accompanying us like a guard of honor, singing their horrible screechy songs.

I could see Madam Pomfrey fussing over Hermione, Krum, Cedric, and Cho, all of whom were wrapped in thick blankets.

Dumbledore and Ludo Bagman stood beaming at me and Harry from the bank as we swam nearer, but Percy, who looked very white and somehow much younger than usual, came splashing out to meet us. Meanwhile Madame Maxime was trying to restrain Fleur Delacour, who was quite hysterical, fighting tooth and nail to return to the water.

"Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Is she alive? Is she 'urt?"

Percy seized Ron and was dragging him back to the bank Dumbledore and Bagman were pulling Harry upright while I crouched down so Fleur's sister and Kat could hop down before collapsing to the floor, exhausted; Fleur had broken free of Madame Maxime and was hugging her sister.

I phased back and lay on the floor, panting, until Madam Pomfrey took me away, wrapped me so tightly in a blanket that I felt as though I were in a straitjacket, and forced a measure of very hot potion down my throat. Steam gushed out of my ears.

"Harry, Jack, well done!" Hermione cried. "You did it! You're well outside the time limit, though... Did it take you ages to find us?"

"No... I found you okay..."

My feeling of stupidity was growing. Now I was out of the water, it seemed perfectly clear that Dumbledore's safety precautions wouldn't have permitted the death of a hostage just because their champion hadn't turned up. Why hadn't I just grabbed Kat and gone? I would have been first back... Cedric and Krum hadn't wasted time worrying about anyone else; they hadn't taken the mersong seriously...

Dumbledore was crouching at the water's edge, deep in conversation with what seemed to be the chief merperson, a particularly wild and ferocious-looking female. He was making the same sort of screechy noises that the merpeople made when they were above water; clearly, Dumbledore could speak Mermish. Finally he straightened up, turned to his fellow judges, and said, "A conference before we give the marks, I think."

The judges went into a huddle. Madam Pomfrey had gone to rescue Ron from Percy's clutches; she led him over to me and the others, gave him a blanket and some Pepperup Potion, then went to fetch Fleur and her sister. Fleur had many cuts on her face and arms and her robes were torn, but she didn't seem to care, nor would she allow Madam Pomfrey to clean them.

"Look after Gabrielle," she told her, and then she turned to me. "You saved 'er," she said breathlessly. "Even though she was not your 'ostage."

"Yeah," I said, heartily wishing I'd left all three girls tied to the statue. Still, I was glad Kat was okay.

Just then, Ludo Bagman's magically magnified voice boomed out beside them, making us all jump, and causing the crowd in the stands to go very quiet.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our decision. Merchieftainess Murcus has told us exactly what happened at the bottom of the lake, and we have therefore decided to award marks out of fifty for each of the champions, as follows...

"Fleur Delacour, though she demonstrated excellent use of the Bubble-Head Charm, was attacked by grindylows as she approached her goal, and failed to retrieve her hostage. We award her twenty-five points."

Applause from the stands.

"I deserved zero," said Fleur throatily, shaking her head.

"Cedric Diggory, who also used the Bubble-Head Charm, was first to return with his hostage, though he returned one minute outside the time limit of an hour." Enormous cheers from the Hufflepuffs in the crowd; I saw Cho give Cedric a glowing look. "We therefore award him forty-seven points."

My heart sank. If Cedric had been outside the time limit, me and Harry most certainly had been. I sat back down, pulling Kat onto my lap and keeping my arms around her waist.

"Viktor Krum used an incomplete form of Transfiguration, which was nevertheless effective, and was second to return with his hostage. We award him forty points."

Karkaroff clapped particularly hard, looking very superior.

"Jack Lupin used gillyweed to great effect," Bagman continued. "He returned last, and well outside the time limit of an hour, along with Harry Potter, who also used Gillyweed. However, the Merchieftainess informs us that Mr. Lupin was first to reach the hostages, then Mr. Potter, and that the delay in their return was due to their determination to return all hostages to safety, not merely their own."

Ron and Hermione both gave me and Harry half-exasperated, half-commiserating looks as Kat leant into me, muttering about Gryffindor stupidity. I smiled at her.

"Most of the judges," and here, Bagman gave Karkaroff a very nasty look, "feel that this shows moral fiber and merits full marks. However... Mr. Potter's score is forty-five points, Mr. Lupin's fourty-seven."

My stomach leapt - I was now tying for first place with Harry and Cedric. Ron and Hermione, caught by surprise, stared at us, then laughed and started applauding hard with the rest of the crowd.

"There you go!" Ron shouted over the noise. "You weren't being thick after all - you were showing moral fiber!"

Fleur was clapping very hard too, but Krum didn't look happy at all. He attempted to engage Hermione in conversation again, but she was too busy cheering us to listen. Kat spun round and hugged me tightly.

"The third and final task will take place at dusk on the twenty-fourth of June," continued Bagman. "The champions will be notified of what is coming precisely one month beforehand. Thank you all for your support of the champions.

"Oi, Lupin!" called a voice from behind me. I turned to see Cedric.

"Diggory!" I yelled back. "Who gets the galleons?"

"Keep 'em," said Cedric, looking relieved. I laughed.

I pulled my three friends and Kat into a hug, warming us all up. Once we were all stood there, arms over eachothers shoulders, a flash went off, blinding me to stumble a little bit. I managed to stay on my feet.

It was Collin Creevy. I smiled.

"Make sure I get a copy Collin!" I said, once my eyes refocused. "And... don't ever get a dog... I don't think we like flash..."


	16. Mad Men and Mazes

At half past eight that night, me and Harry left Ron and Hermione in Gryffindor Tower and went downstairs. As he crossed the entrance hall, Cedric came up from the Hufflepuff common room.

"What d'you reckon it's going to be?" he asked us as we went together down the stone steps, out into the cloudy night. "Fleur keeps going on about underground tunnels; she reckons we've got to find treasure."

"That wouldn't be too bad," I said, thinking that I could rely on my werewolf instinct to guide me.

We walked down the dark lawn to the Quidditch stadium, turned through a gap in the stands, and walked out onto the field.

"What've they done to it?" Cedric said indignantly, stopping dead.

The Quidditch field was no longer smooth and flat. It looked as though somebody had been building long, low walls all over it that twisted and crisscrossed in every direction.

"They're hedges!" said Harry, bending to examine the nearest one.

"Hello there!" called a cheery voice.

Ludo Bagman was standing in the middle of the field with Krum and Fleur. Me, Harry and Cedric made their way toward them, climbing over the hedges. Fleur beamed at me as I came nearer. Her attitude toward us had changed completely since we had saved her sister from the lake.

"Well, what d'you think?" said Bagman happily as Harry, Cedric and I climbed over the last hedge. "Growing nicely, aren't they? Give them a month and Hagrid'll have them twenty feet high. Don't worry," he added, grinning, spotting the less-than-happy expressions on our faces, "you'll have your Quidditch field back to normal once the task is over! Now, I imagine you can guess what we're making here?"

No one spoke for a moment. Then -

"Maze," grunted Krum.

"That's right!" said Bagman. "A maze. The third task's really very straightforward. The Triwizard Cup will be placed in the center of the maze. The first champion to touch it will receive full marks."

"We seemply 'ave to get through the maze?" said Fleur.

"There will be obstacles," said Bagman happily, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Hagrid is providing a number of creatures...then there will be spells that must be broken...all that sort of thing, you know. Now, the champions who are leading on points will get a head start into the maze." Bagman grinned at me, Harry and Cedric. "Then Mr. Krum will enter...then Miss Delacour. But you'll all be in with a fighting chance, depending how well you get past the obstacles. Should be fun, eh?"

Me and Harry, who knew only too well the kind of creatures that Hagrid was likely to provide for an event like this, thought it was unlikely to be any fun at all. However, I nodded politely like the other champions.

"Very well... if you haven't got any questions, we'll go back up to the castle, shall we, it's a bit chilly..."

Bagman hurried alongside Harry as we began to wind our way out of the growing maze. I had the feeling that Bagman was going to start offering to help him again, but just then, Krum tapped Harry on the shoulder.

"Could I haff a vord?"

"Yeah, all right," said Harry, slightly surprised.

"Vill you valk vith me?"

"Okay," said Harry curiously.

Bagman looked slightly perturbed.

"I'll wait for you. Harry, shall I?"

"No, it's okay, Mr. Bagman," said Harry, suppressing a smile, "I think I can find the castle on my own, thanks."

Harry and Krum left the stadium together, but Krum did not set a course for the Durmstrang ship. Instead, he walked toward the forest. I followed closely and silently behind. When Krum didn't object to my presence, I walked beside Harry.

"What're we going this way for?" I said as we passed Hagrid's cabin and the illuminated Beauxbatons carriage.

"Don't vont to be overheard," said Krum shortly.

When at last we had reached a quiet stretch of ground a short way from the Beauxbatons horses' paddock, Krum stopped in the shade of the trees and turned to face Harry, me thoughroly confused.

"I vant to know," he said, glowering, "vot there is between you and Hermy-own-ninny."

Harry and I stared up at Krum in amazement.

"Nothing," he said. But Krum glowered at him, and Harry elaborated. "We're friends. She's not my girlfriend and she never has been. It's just that Skeeter woman making things up."

Harry was referring to the article that had appeared in the paper about Hermione in a love triangle between her, Krum and Harry. It was odd, I'll give her that.

"Hermy-own-ninny talks about you very often," said Krum, looking suspiciously at Harry.

"Yeah," said Harry, "because were friends."

I couldn't quite believe he was having this conversation with Viktor Krum, the famous International Quidditch player.

"You haff never... you haff not..."

"No," said Harry very firmly.

Krum looked slightly happier. He stared at Harry for a few seconds, then said, "You fly very veil. I vos votching at the first task."

"Thanks," said Harry, grinning broadly. "I saw you at the Quidditch World Cup. The Wronski Feint, you really -"

But something moved behind Krum in the trees, and I, who had some experience of the sort of thing that lurked in the forest, instinctively grabbed Krum's and Harry's arms and pulled them around.

"Vot is it?"

I shook my head, staring at the place where I'd seen movement. Harry slipped his hand inside his robes, reaching for his wand, as I glared into the darkness.

Suddenly a man staggered out from behind a tall oak. For a moment, I didn't recognize him... then I realized it was Mr. Crouch.

He looked as though he had been traveling for days. The knees of his robes were ripped and bloody, his face scratched; he was unshaven and gray with exhaustion. His neat hair and mustache were both in need of a wash and a trim. His strange appearance, however, was nothing to the way he was behaving. Muttering and gesticulating, Mr. Crouch appeared to be talking to someone that he alone could see.

Mad people have all the fun.

"Vosn't he a judge?" said Krum, staring at Mr. Crouch. "Isn't he vith your Ministry?"

I nodded, hesitated for a moment, then walked slowly toward Mr. Crouch - with Harry at my side - who did not look at us, but continued to talk to a nearby tree.

"... and when you've done that, Weatherby, send an owl to Dumbledore confirming the number of Durmstrang students who will be attending the tournament, Karkaroff has just sent word there will be twelve..."

"Mr. Crouch?" said Harry cautiously.

"... and then send another owl to Madame Maxime, because she might want to up the number of students she's bringing, now Karkaroff's made it a round dozen... do that, Weatherby, will you? Will you? Will..."

Mr. Crouch's eyes were bulging. He stood staring at the tree, muttering soundlessly at it. Then he staggered sideways and fell to his knees.

"Mr. Crouch?" Harry said loudly. "Are you all right?"

Crouch's eyes were rolling in his head. I looked around at Krum, who had followed us into the trees, and was looking down at Crouch in alarm.

"Vot is wrong with him?"

"No idea," I muttered. "Listen, you'd better go and get someone -"

"Dumbledore!" gasped Mr. Crouch. He reached out and seized a handful of Harry's robes, dragging him closer, though his eyes were staring over Harry's head. "I need... see... Dumbledore..."

"Okay," said Harry, "if you get up, Mr. Crouch, we can go up to the-"

"I've done... stupid... thing..." Mr. Crouch breathed. He looked utterly mad. His eyes were rolling and bulging, and a trickle of spittle was sliding down his chin. Every word he spoke seemed to cost him a terrible effort. "Must... tell... Dumbledore..."

"Get up, Mr. Crouch," said Harry loudly and clearly. "Get up, I'll take you to Dumbledore!"

Mr., Crouch's eyes rolled forward onto Harry.

"Who... you?" he whispered.

"I'm a student at the school," said Harry, looking around at me for some help, but I shrugged.

"You're not... his?" whispered Crouch, his mouth sagging.

"No," said Harry, without - I'll bet - the faintest idea what Crouch was talking about.

"Dumbledore's?"

"That's right," said Harry.

Crouch was pulling him closer; Harry tried to loosen Crouch's grip on his robes, but it wasn't working.

"Warn... Dumbledore..."

"I'll get Dumbledore if you let go of me," said Harry. "Just let go, Mr. Crouch, and I'll get him..."

"Thank you, Weatherby, and when you have done that, I would like a cup of tea. My wife and son will be arriving shortly, we are attending a concert tonight with Mr. and Mrs. Fudge."

Crouch was now talking fluently to a tree again, and seemed completely unaware that Harry was there. I tore Harry's robes out of his grasp and pulled him behind me, out of harms way.

"Yes, my son has recently gained twelve O.W.L.s, most satisfactory, yes, thank you, yes, very proud indeed. Now, if you could bring me that memo from the Andorran Minister of Magic, I think I will have time to draft a response..."

"You stay here with him!" Harry said to me and Krum. "I'll get Dumbledore, I'll be quicker, I know where his office is -"

"He is mad," said Krum doubtfully, staring down at Crouch, who was still gabbling to the tree, apparently convinced it was Percy.

"Just stay with him," said Harry, starting to move away, but his movement seemed to trigger another abrupt change in Mr. Crouch, who seized me hard around the knees and pulled me to the ground.

"Don't... leave... me!" he whispered, his eyes bulging again. "I... escaped... must warn... must tell... see Dumbledore... my fault... all my fault... Bertha... dead... all my fault... my son... my fault... tell Dumbledore... Harry Potter... the Dark Lord... stronger... Harry Potter..."

"Go get Dumbledore, Harry" I looked furiously around at Krum. "Fucking help me, will you?"

Looking extremely apprehensive, Krum moved forward and squatted down next to Mr. Crouch.

"Just keep him here," said Harry, helping to pull me free of Mr. Crouch. "I'll be back with Dumbledore."

"Hurry, von't you?" Krum called after him as Harry sprinted away from the forest and up through the dark grounds.

Me and Krum stood in silence for a moment, when I heard a sudden noise from behind us. I turned quickly, but a red light was shot at my chest. I flew back a few feet, and saw Krum drop to the ground, a flash of light hitting him too...

Damn it!

* * *

I woke suddenly.

Remembering what had just happened, I tried to get up, but somebody pushed me back down.

Dumbledore?

Then Dumbledore bent over Krum , pointed his wand at him, and muttered, "Ennervate."

Krum opened his eyes. He looked dazed. When he saw Dumbledore, he tried to sit up, but Dumbledore put a hand on his shoulder and made him lie still like he had with me. I shook my head, wow, that was one powerful stunner.

"He attacked us!" Krum muttered, putting a hand up to his head. "The old madman attacked us! I vos looking around to see vare Potter had gone and he attacked from behind!"

"Lie still for a moment," Dumbledore said.

The sound of thunderous footfalls reached us, and Hagrid came panting into sight with Fang at his heels. He was carrying his crossbow.

"Professor Dumbledore!" he said, his eyes widening. "Harry - Jack - what the -?"

"Hagrid, I need you to fetch Professor Karkaroff," said Dumbledore. "His student has been attacked. When you've done that, kindly alert Professor Moody -"

"No need, Dumbledore," said a wheezy growl. "I'm here."

Moody was limping toward us, leaning on his staff, his wand lit.

"Damn leg," he said furiously. "Would've been here quicker... what's happened? Snape said something about Crouch -"

"Crouch?" said Hagrid blankly.

"Karkaroff, please, Hagrid!" said Dumbledore sharply.

"Oh yeah... right y'are, Professor..." said Hagrid, and he turned and disappeared into the dark trees, Fang trotting after him.

"I don't know where Barty Crouch is," Dumbledore told Moody, "but it is essential that we find him."

"I'm onto it," growled Moody, and he pulled out his wand and limped off into the forest.

Neither me, Dumbledore nor Harry spoke again until we heard the unmistakable sounds of Hagrid and Fang returning. Karkaroff was hurrying along behind them. He was wearing his sleek silver furs, and he looked pale and agitated.

"What is this?" he cried when he saw me and Krum on the ground and Dumbledore and Harry beside us. "What's going on?"

"I vos attacked!" said Krum, sitting up now and rubbing his head. "Mr. Crouch or votever his name -"

"Crouch attacked you? Crouch attacked you? The Triwizard judge?"

"Igor," Dumbledore began, but Karkaroff had drawn himself up, clutching his furs around him, looking livid.

"Treachery!" he bellowed, pointing at Dumbledore. "It is a plot! You and your Ministry of Magic have lured me here under false pretenses, Dumbledore! This is not an equal competition! First you sneak Potter and a werewolf into the tournament! Now one of your Ministry friends attempts to put my champion out of action! I smell double-dealing and corruption in this whole affair, and you, Dumbledore, you, with your talk of closer international wizarding links, of rebuilding old ties, of forgetting old differences - here's what I think of you!"

Karkaroff spat onto the ground at Dumbledore's feet. In one swift movement, Hagrid seized the front of Karkaroff's furs, lifted him into the air, and slammed him against a nearby tree.

"Apologize!" Hagrid snarled as Karkaroff gasped for breath, Hagrid's massive fist at his throat, his feet dangling in midair.

"Hagrid, no!" Dumbledore shouted, his eyes flashing.

Hagrid removed the hand pinning Karkaroff to the tree, and Karkaroff slid all the way down the trunk and slumped in a huddle at its roots; a few twigs and leaves showered down upon his head.

"Kindly escort Harry and Jack back up to the castle, Hagrid," said Dumbledore sharply.

Breathing heavily, Hagrid gave Karkaroff a glowering look.

"Maybe I'd better stay here. Headmaster..."

"You will take them back to school, Hagrid," Dumbledore repeated firmly. "Take them right up to Gryffindor Tower. And Harry - Jack - I want you to stay there. Anything you might want to do - any owls you might want to send - they can wait until morning, do you understand me?"

"Er - yes," said Harry, staring at him.

"I'll leave Fang with yeh. Headmaster," Hagrid said, staring menacingly at Karkaroff, who was still sprawled at the foot of the tree, tangled in furs and tree roots. "Stay, Fang. C'mon, you two."

We marched in silence past the Beauxbatons carriage and up toward the castle.

"How dare he," Hagrid growled as we strode past the lake. "How dare he accuse Dumbledore. Like Dumbledore'd do anythin' like that. Like Dumbledore wanted you in the tournament in the firs' place. Worried! I dunno when I seen Dumbledore more worried than he's bin lately. An' you!" Hagrid suddenly said angrily to us, who looked up at him, taken aback. "What were yeh doin', wanderin' off with ruddy Krum? He's from Durmstrang! Coulda jinxed yeh right there, couldn he? Hasn' Moody taught yeh nothin'? 'Magine lettin him lure yeh off on yer own -"

"Krum's all right!" said Harry as we climbed the steps into the entrance hall. "He wasn't trying to jinx me, he just wanted to talk about Hermione -"

"I'll be havin' a few words with her, an' all," said Hagrid grimly, stomping up the stairs. "The less you lot 'ave ter do with these foreigners, the happier yeh'll be. Yeh can trust any of 'em."

"You were getting on all right with Madame Maxime," Harry said, annoyed.

"Don' you talk ter me abou' her!" said Hagrid, and he looked quite frightening for a moment. "I've got her number now! Tryin' ter get back in me good books, tryin' ter get me ter tell her what's comin in the third task. Ha! You can' trust any of'em!"

Hagrid was in such a bad mood, I was quite glad to say good-bye to him in front of the Fat Lady. I clambered through the portrait hole into the common room and went up to bed while Harry went to tell Ron and Hermione what had happened.


	17. Task Three Terror

Breakfast was a very noisy affair at the Gryffindor table on the morning of the third task. The post owls appeared, bringing me a good-luck card from Moony. and Harry one from Sirius. A screech owl arrived for Hermione, carrying her morning copy of the Daily Prophet as usual. She unfolded the paper, glanced at the front page, and spat out a mouthful of pumpkin juice all over it.

"What?" said me, Harry and Ron together, staring at her. It's not every day you see a reaction like that.

"Nothing," said Hermione quickly, trying to shove the paper out of sight, but Ron grabbed it. He stared at the headline and said, "No way. Not today. That old cow."

"What?" I said. "Rita Skeeter again?"

"No," said Ron, and just like Hermione, he attempted to push the paper out of sight.

"It's about us, isn't it?" said Harry.

"No," said Ron, in an entirely unconvincing tone. But before we could demand to see the paper. Draco Malfoy shouted across the Great Hall from the Slytherin table.

"Hey, Potter! How's your head? You feeling all right? Sure you're not going to go berserk on us, Lupin?"

Malfoy was holding a copy of the Daily Prophet too. Slytherins up and down the table were sniggering, twisting in their seats to see our reaction.

"Let me see it," I said to Ron. "Give it here."

Very reluctantly, Ron handed over the newspaper. I turned it over and found himself staring at my own picture, along with one of Harry, beneath the banner headline:  
_  
__**"HARRY POTTER AND JACK LUPIN"  
"DISTURBED AND DANGEROUS"  
The boy who defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is unstable and possibly dangerous, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent. Alarming evidence has recently come to light about Harry Potter and Jack Lupin's strange behavior, which casts doubts upon their suitability to compete in a demanding competition like the Triwizard Tournament, or even to attend Hogwarts School.  
Potter, the Daily Prophet can exclusively reveal, regularly collapses at school, and is often heard to complain of pain in the scar on his forehead (relic of the curse with which You-Know-Who attempted to kill him). On Monday last, midway through a Divination lesson, your Daily Prophet reporter witnessed Potter storming from the class, claiming that his scar was hurting too badly to continue studying. Along with Lupin, who ran out after him..  
It is possible, say top experts at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, that Potters brain was affected by the attack inflicted upon him by You-Know-Who, and that his insistence that the scar is still hurting is an expression of his deep-seated confusion.  
"He might even be pretending," said one specialist. "This could be a plea for attention."  
The Daily Prophet, however, has unearthed worrying facts about Harry Potter that Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, has carefully concealed from the wizarding public.  
"Potter can speak Parseltongue," reveals Draco Malfoy, a Hogwarts fourth year. "There were a lot of attacks on students a couple of years ago, and most people thought Potter was behind them after they saw him lose his temper at a dueling club and set a snake on another boy. It was all hushed up, though. But he's made friends with werewolves and giants too. We think he'd do anything for a bit of power."  
Parseltongue, the ability to converse with snakes, has long been considered a Dark Art. Indeed, the most famous Parselmouth of our times is none other than You-Know-Who himself. A member of the Dark Force Defense League, who wished to remain unnamed, stated that he would regard any wizard who could speak Parseltongue "as worthy of investigation. Personally, I would be highly suspicious of anybody who could converse with snakes, as serpents are often used in the worst kinds of Dark Magic, and are historically associated with evildoers." Similarly, "anyone who seeks out the company of such vicious creatures as werewolves and giants would appear to have a fondness for violence."  
While on the werewolf matter, some truth has come to light on the species of Jack Lupin, son of werewolf and previous Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus Lupin. Young Lupin has expressed many supernatural abilities. "He attacked our potions teacher," reveals Draco Malfoy. "He lost his temper and just turned on him for no reason, and nothing was even said about it." A specialest was interviewed about the young Lupin. Lycans were hunted to extinction many years ago, and a cross-werewolf-Lycan Hybrid could pose dangers we'd never thought of before. Albus Dumbledore should surely consider whether a boy such as this should be allowed to compete in the Triwizard Tournament. Some fear that Potter might resort to the Dark Arts in his desperation to win the tournament, or Lupin will resort to attacking the other contestants, in the third task of which takes place this evening.**_

"Bit harsh, nothing I haven't heard before. Except I didn't know you were a Parselmouth Harry, that's cool." I said lightly, folding up the paper.

Over at the Slytherin table, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were laughing at us, tapping their heads with their fingers, pulling grotesquely mad faces, waggling their tongues like snakes and making loud barking noises. They looked quite odd.

"How did she know your scar hurt in Divination?" Ron said. "And that you ran out? There's no way she was there, there's no way she could've heard -"

"The window was open," said Harry. "I opened it to breathe."

"You were at the top of North Tower!" Hermione said. "Your voice couldn't have carried all the way down to the grounds!"

"Well, you're the one who's supposed to be researching magical methods of bugging!" said Harry. "You tell me how she did it!"

"I've been trying!" said Hermione. "But I... but..."

An odd, dreamy expression suddenly came over Hermione's face. She slowly raised a hand and ran her fingers through her hair.

"Are you all right?" said Ron, frowning at her.

"Yes," said Hermione breathlessly. She ran her fingers through her hair again, and then held her hand up to her mouth, as though speaking into an invisible walkie-talkie. Me, Harry and Ron stared at each other.

"I've had an idea," Hermione said, gazing into space. "I think I know... because then no one would be able to see... even Moody... and she'd have been able to get onto the window ledge... but she's not allowed... she's definitely not allowed... I think we've got her! Just give me two seconds in the library - just to make sure!"

With that, Hermione seized her school bag and dashed out of the Great Hall.

"Oi!" Ron called after her. "We've got our History of Magic exam in ten minutes! Blimey," he said, turning back to us, "she must really hate that Skeeter woman to risk missing the start of an exam. What're you going to do in Binns's class - read again?"

Exempt from the end-of-term tests as Triwizard champions, Harry and I had been sitting in the back of every exam class so far, looking up fresh hexes for the third task and thinking about how to get through the maze.

"S'pose so," Harry said to Ron; but just then. Professor McGonagall came walking alongside the Gryffindor table toward us.

"Potter, Lupin, the champions are congregating in the chamber off the Hall after breakfast," she said.

"But the task's not till tonight!" said Harry, accidentally spilling scrambled eggs down his front. Had I mistaken the time?

"I'm aware of that, Potter," she said. "The champions' families are invited to watch the final task, you know. This is simply a chance for you to greet them."

She moved away. Harry gaped after her, while my heart leapt. Moony was here?

"She doesn't expect the Dursleys to turn up, does she?" he asked Ron blankly.

"Dunno," said Ron. "I'd better hurry, I'm going to be late for Binns. See you later."

We finished our breakfast in the emptying Great Hall. I saw Fleur Delacour get up from the Ravenclaw table and join Cedric as he crossed to the side chamber and entered. Krum slouched off to join them shortly afterward. I waited for Harry, he didn't move. The door of the side chamber opened, and Cedric stuck his head out.

"Harry, Jack, come on, they're waiting for you!"

I ran past and rushed into the chamber, spotting Moony.

I felt my face break out in a grin and rushed over, nearly tackling him in a giant hug. Moony stumbled back a few feet, before realising who had nearly tackled him.

"Oh God - I've missed you!" I said, gripping him in a bone crushing hug.

"Jack - can't bre - athe -" he choked out.

"Sorry! Sorry!" I let go and backed up. "Sorry!"

"Oh, don't worry about it, just go get me some new ribs." he said, rubbing his ribs. We broke into laugher. I looked around and noticed Harry had finally come in, and Mrs. Weasley and Bill were here talking with him.

Moony hugged me, and I hugged him back, gentler this time.

"Nervous about the task tonight?" he asked me, pulling back.

"Me? Nervous? Never!" I said, smirking.

Moony ruffled my hair and I swatted his hands away.

"Care to give me a tour? I'm afraid I've lost my way around here."

"Really? Last time I remember you were here just last year! Oh well, lets go!" I grabbed his arm and proceeded to drag him out the hall.

* * *

I spent the next few hours joking and walking around Hogwarts with Dad, having such a great time I completely forgot about the task.

At dinner, Moony and I headed back to the Great Hall for the evening feast.

"I haven't checked my Lunar Calander in a while," I admitted. "Catch me up on when the full moon last was,"

"Don't worry," Moony said. "I won't be running off on you tonight. The full moon was a week and a half ago."

We finally reached the great Hall, and Harry, Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Ron and Hermione were already there. We sat down just as the food appeared.

There were more coarses than usual, but I didn't eat much. As the enchanted ceiling overhead began to fade from blue to a dusky purple, Dumbledore rose to his feet at the staff table, and silence fell.

"Ladies and gentlemen, in five minutes' time, I will be asking you to make your way down to the Quidditch field for the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament. Will the champions please follow Mr. Bagman down to the stadium now."

Me and Harry got up. The Gryffindors all along the table were applauding us; the Weasleys, Moony and Hermione all wished us good luck, and we headed off out of the Great Hall with Cedric, Fleur, and Viktor.

"Feeling all right. Harry?" Bagman asked as we went down the stone steps onto the grounds. "Confident?"

"I'm okay," said Harry, turning to me. "What about you?"

"I'm good." I said truthfully.

We walked onto the Quidditch field, which was now completely unrecognizable. A twenty-foot-high hedge ran all the way around the edge of it. There was a gap right in front of them: the entrance to the vast maze. The passage beyond it looked dark and creepy.

Five minutes later, the stands had begun to fill; the air was full of excited voices and the rumbling of feet as the hundreds of students filed into their seats. The sky was a deep, clear blue now, and the first stars were starting to appear. Hagrid, Professor Moody, Professor McGonagall, and Professor Flitwick came walking into the stadium and approached Bagman and us champions. They were wearing large, red, luminous stars on their hats, all except Hagrid, who had his on the back of his moleskin vest.

"We are going to be patrolling the outside of the maze," said Professor McGonagall to us. "If you get into difficulty, and wish to be rescued, send red sparks into the air, and one of us will come and get you, do you understand?"

The champions nodded.

"Off you go, then!" said Bagman brightly to the four patrollers.

"Good luck, you two," Hagrid whispered, and the four of them walked away in different directions, to station themselves around the maze. Bagman now pointed his wand at his throat, muttered, "Sonorus," and his magically magnified voice echoed into the stands.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament is about to begin! Let me remind you how the points currently stand! Tied in first place, with eighty-five points each - Mr. Cedric Diggory, Mr. Jack Lupin and Mr. Harry Potter, all of Hogwarts School!" The cheers and applause sent birds from the Forbidden Forest fluttering into the darkening sky. "In second place, with eighty points - Mr. Viktor Krum, of Durmstrang Institute!" More applause. "And in third place - Miss Fleur Delacour, of Beauxbatons Academy!"

I could just make out Moony, Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Ron, and Hermione applauding Fleur politely, halfway up the stands. I waved up at them, and they waved back, beaming at me.

"So... on my whistle, Harry, Jack, Cedric!" said Bagman. "Three - two - one -"

He gave a short blast on his whistle, and Harry, Cedric and I hurried forward into the maze.

The towering hedges cast black shadows across the path, and, whether because they were so tall and thick or because they had been enchanted, the sound of the surrounding crowd was silenced the moment they entered the maze. "Lumos." I heard Harry and Cedric mutter, but I didn't need to: werewolf senses.

After about fifty yards, we reached a fork. We looked at each other.

"See you," Harry said, and he took the left one, while Cedric took the right. I looked down each one, then took the middle. Half way down it, I heard Bagman's whistle for a second time. Krum had entered the maze. I sped up, my chosen path seemed completely deserted. I jumped forwards, shifting in mid air.

I kept on running.

Right... Left... Right again. Twice I found myself facing dead ends. I followed my own scent back the way I'd come and took another path.

I didn't know how long I had been running for when a scream shattered the silence.

"Fleur!" I tried to yell, but it came out as a loud bark, making a few birds scatter.

I ran on, trying to catch Fleur's or Harry's or anyone's scent, but it was useless. I carried on running.

I met nothing for about five minutes, but kept running into dead ends. Then, I rounded a corner and found myself facing a Blast-Ended-Skrewt.

It was enormous. Ten feet long, it looked more like a giant scorpion than anything. It's long sting was curled over it's back.

I gave a moment of thought, then sped away in the opposite direction as fast as my four legs would carry me. The Skrewt did not follow.

I had been hurrying along my new path for a few minutes, when I heard a voice that froze me in my tracks.

"What are you doing?" yelled Cedric's voice. "What the hell d'you hink you're doing?"

And then, I heard Krum's voice.

_"Crucio!"_

The air was suddenly filled with Cedric's yells.

I sprinted up the path, but found no opening. I let out an irritated growl, before I shoved right through the hedge.

"Stupefy!" Harry yelled from behind me.

The spell hit Krum in the back; he stopped dead in his tracks, fell forward, and lay motionless, facedown in the grass. I dashed over to Cedric, who had stopped twitching and was lying there panting, his hands over his face.

"Are you all right?" Harry said roughly, grabbing Cedric's arm.

"Yeah," panted Cedric. "Yeah... I don't believe it... he crept up behind me... I heard him, I turned around, and he had his wand on me..."

Cedric got up. He was still shaking. Me and Harry looked down at Krum.

"I can't believe this... I thought he was all right," Harry said, staring at Krum.

"So did I," said Cedric.

"Did you hear Fleur scream earlier?" said Harry.

"Yeah," said Cedric. "You don't think Krum got her too?"

"I don't know," said Harry slowly.

"Should we leave him here?" Cedric muttered.

"No," said Harry. "I reckon we should send up red sparks. Someone'll come and collect him... otherwise he'll probably be eaten by a skrewt." Ah, so Harry'd met the skrewts too?

"He'd deserve it," Cedric muttered, but all the same, he raised his wand and shot a shower of red sparks into the air, which hovered high above Krum, marking the spot where he lay.

Me, Harry and Cedric stood there in the darkness for a moment, looking around us. Then Cedric said, "Well... I s'pose we'd better go on..."

"What?" said Harry. "Oh... yeah... right..."

I nodded my head at both of them, then loped off down a path, continuing my random route.

It was not five minutes later that I noticed a faint blue glow up ahead of me. I increased my speed, my paws hitting the ground with thuds so loud I was sure Harry and Cedric would be able to hear them.

The Triwizard Cup was gleaming on a plinth a hundred yards away. Suddenly, a dark figure hurtled out of a path in front of me.

"Cedric!" Harry bellowed suddenly from an opening in front of me. "On your left!"

Cedric looked around just in time to hurl himself past the thing and avoid colliding with it, but in his haste, he tripped. I saw Cedric's wand fly out of his hand as a gigantic spider stepped into the path and began to bear down upon Cedric.

"Stupefy!" Harry yelled; the spell hit the spider's gigantic, hairy black body, but for all the good it did, he might as well have thrown a stone at it; the spider jerked, scuttled around, and ran at Harry instead.

"Stupefy! Impedimenta! Stupefy!"

But it was no use - the spider was either so large, or so magical, that the spells were doing no more than aggravating it.

Without stopping to think, I ran towards them at top speed, rushing past Harry and colliding with the spider.

I was lifted into the air in its front legs; struggling madly, I tried to kick it; my back leg connected with the pincers and next moment I was in excruciating pain. I could hear Cedric yelling "Stupefy!" too, but his spell had no more effect than Harry's - Harry raised his wand as the spider opened its pincers once more and shouted "Expelliarmus!"

It worked - the Disarming Spell made the spider drop me, but that meant that I fell twelve feet onto my already injured leg, which crumpled beneath me as I shifted back.

"Stupefy!'' Harry yelled, just as Cedric yelled the same thing.

The two spells combined did what one alone had not: The spider keeled over sideways, flattening a nearby hedge, and strewing the path with a tangle of hairy legs.

"Jack!" I heard Cedric shouting. "You all right? Did it fall on you?"

"No," I called back, panting. I looked down at my leg. It was bleeding freely and plainly broken. I could see some sort of thick, gluey secretion from the spider's pincers on my torn trousers. I tried to get up, but my leg was shaking badly and did not want to support my weight. I leaned against Harry, gasping for breath, and looked around.

Cedric was standing feet from the Triwizard Cup, which was gleaming behind him.

"Take it, then," Harry panted to Cedric. "Go on, take it. You're there."

But Cedric didn't move. He merely stood there, looking at Harry and I. Then he turned to stare at the cup. I saw the longing expression on his face in its golden light. Cedric looked around at me again, and I was now holding onto the hedge to support myself. Cedric took a deep breath.

"You take it. You should win. That's twice you've saved my neck in here."

"That's not how it's supposed to work," I said. "The one who reaches the cup first gets the points. That's you. I'm telling you, I'm not going to win any races on this leg as it is."

Cedric took a few paces nearer to the Stunned spider, away from the cup, shaking his head.

"No," he said.

"Stop being bloody noble," I said irritably. "Just take it, then we can get out of here."

Cedric watched me steadying myself, holding tight to the hedge.

"You told me about the dragons," Cedric said to Harry. "I would've gone down in the first task if you hadn't told me what was coming."

"I had help on that too," Harry snapped, trying to mop up my bloody leg with his robes, making me wince. "You helped me with the egg - we're square."

"I had help on the egg in the first place," said Cedric.

"We're still square," said Harry, I tested my leg gingerly; it shook violently as I put weight on it; I had broke my ankle and something else when the spider had dropped me, but it was healing.

"You should've got more points on the second task," said Cedric mulishly. "You stayed behind to get all the hostages. I should've done that."

"We were the only ones who were thick enough to take that song seriously!" I said. "Just take the cup!"

"No," said Cedric.

He stepped over the spider's tangled legs to join Harry, who stared at him. Cedric was serious. He was walking away from the sort of glory Hufflepuff House hadn't had in centuries.

"Go on," Cedric said. He looked as though this was costing him every ounce of resolution he had, but his face was set, his arms were folded, he seemed decided.

"The three of us," I said.

"What?"

"We'll take it at the same time. It's still a Hogwarts victory. We'll tie for it."

Cedric stared at Harry, then me. He unfolded his arms.

"You - you sure?"

"Yeah," said Harry. "Yeah... we've helped each other out, haven't we? We all got here. Let's just take it together."

For a moment, Cedric looked as though he couldn't believe his ears; then his face split in a grin.

"You're on," he said. "Come here."

He grabbed my arm below the shoulder and helped me limp toward the plinth where the cup stood with the help of Harry. When we had reached it, we all held a hand out over one of the cup's gleaming handles.

"On three, right?" said Harry. "One - two - three -"

Me, Harry and Cedric each grasped a handle.

Instantly, I felt a jerk somewhere behind my navel. My feet had left the ground. I could not unclench the hand holding the Triwizard Cup; it was pulling me onward in a howl of wind and swirling color, Cedric and Harry at my side.


	18. Death and Resurrection

My feet slammed into the ground; my injured leg gave way and I fell forward. I raised my head.

"Where are we?" I asked in surprise.

Cedric shook his head and got up, pulling me and Harry to our feet, and we looked around. We had left the Hogwarts grounds completely; we had obviously traveled miles - perhaps hundreds of miles - for even the mountains surrounding the castle were gone. We were standing in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to our right. A hill rose above us to our left. I could just make out the outline of a fine old house on the hillside. Great, perfect Horror-movie setting.

Cedric looked down at the Triwizard Cup, and then up at me and Harry. I shifted my weight and found my leg had healed. I grinned: I was back in the game.

"Did anyone tell you guys the cup was a portkey?" he asked.

"Nope," I said, I was looking around the graveyard. It was completely silent and slightly eerie. "Is this supposed to be part of the task?"

"I dunno," said Cedric, he sounded slightly nervous. "Wands out, d'you reckon?"

"Yeah," said Harry, pulling out his wand. I shoved mine into my back pocket, just incase I needed to phase quickly.

"Someone's coming," said Harry suddenly.

I tensed, looking through the darkness as we watched a figure drawing nearer, walking steadily towards us between the graves. I couldn't make out a face, but from the way it was walking and holding its arms, I could tell that it was carrying something. Whoever it was, he was short, and wearing a hooded cloak pulled up over his head to obscure his face. And - several paces nearer, the gap between them closing all the time - I saw that the thing in the persons arms looked like a baby... or was it merely a bundle of robes?

Harry lowered his wand slightly and glanced sideways at Cedric and me. Cedric shot him a quizzical look while I shrugged slightly. The three of us turned back to watch the approaching figure.

It stopped beside a towering marble headstone, only six feet from us. For a second, me, Harry, Cedric and the short figure simply looked at one another.

Then, Harry made a sudden movement next to me and Cedric. His wand slipped from his fingers as he put his hands over his face; his knees buckled; he was on the ground and breathing heavy, as though in pain.

"Harry?" I whispered, kneeling quickly beside him.

Then, quite suddenly, I heard a high, cold voice say, "Kill the spare."

A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night: "Avada Kedavra!"

A blast of green light blazed through the darkness, and I heard something heavy fall to the ground beside me.

"NO!" I yelled, looking to my right. Cedric was lying spread-eagled on the ground beside me. He was dead. "NO! CEDRIC!"

I stared into Cedric's face, at his open gray eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house, at his half-open mouth, which looked slightly surprised.

I felt an involuntary shudder ripple through my body, a convulsion heaving through me. In less than a second, I was on my feet, ready to kill the bastard that had killed our friend in cold blood.

The man in the cloak said a spell, and in mere seconds, I felt chains around my neck. I choked as he said another spell, and I was forced against a marble headstone. Chains wrapped themselves from around my neck and captured my wrists, holding them above my head. Another chain wrapped around my middle and I was unable to move.

The short man in the cloak had put down his bundle, lit his wand, and was dragging Harry toward the marble headstone next to the one I was chained to. I saw the name upon it flickering in the wandlight before Harry was forced around and slammed against it.

TOM RIDDLE

Who the hell was Tom Riddle?

The cloaked man was now conjuring tight cords around Harry, tying him from neck to ankles to the headstone. I could hear shallow, fast breathing from the depths of the hood; Harry struggled, and the man hit him - I growled menacingly - hit him with a hand that had a finger missing. And Harry realized who was under the hood at the same time I did. It was Wormtail.

"You!" he gasped.

But Wormtail, who had finished conjuring the ropes, did not reply; he was busy checking the tightness of the cords, his fingers trembling uncontrollably, fumbling over the knots. Once sure that Harry was bound so tightly to the headstone that he couldn't move an inch, Wormtail drew a length of some black material from the inside of his cloak and stuffed it roughly into Harry's mouth, then, without a word, he turned from us and hurried away. Neither me nor Harry could make a sound, nor could we see where Wormtail had gone; I couldn't move at all, we could see only what was right in front of us.

Cedric's body was lying some twenty feet away. Some way beyond it, glinting in the starlight, lay the Triwizard Cup. Harry's wand was on the ground at Cedric's feet. The bundle of robes that I had thought was a baby was close by, at the foot of the grave. It seemed to be stirring fretfully. We watched it... and he suddenly knew that I didn't want to see what was in those robes... I didn't want that bundle opened...

I could hear noises in front of me. I looked down and saw a gigantic snake slithering through the grass, circling the headstones where we were tied. Wormtail's fast, wheezy breathing was growing louder again. It sounded as though he was forcing something heavy across the ground. Then he came back within our range of vision, and I saw him pushing a stone cauldron to the foot of the graves. It was full of what seemed to be water - I could hear it slopping around - and it was larger than any cauldron we had ever used; a great stone belly large enough for a full-grown man to sit in.

The thing inside the bundle of robes on the ground was stirring more persistently, as though it was trying to free itself. Now Wormtail was busying himself at the bottom of the cauldron with a wand. Suddenly there were crackling names beneath it. The large snake slithered away into the darkness.

The liquid in the cauldron seemed to heat very fast. The surface began not only to bubble, but to send out fiery sparks, as though it were on fire. Steam was thickening, blurring the outline of Wormtail tending the fire. The movements beneath the robes became more agitated. And I heard the high, cold voice again.

"Hurry!"

The whole surface of the water was alight with sparks now. It might have been encrusted with diamonds.

"It is ready. Master."

"Now..." said the cold voice.

Wormtail pulled open the robes on the ground, revealing what was inside them, and Harry let out a yell that was strangled in the wad of material blocking his mouth, while a low growl escaped my lips.

It was as though Wormtail had flipped over a stone and revealed something ugly, slimy, and blind - but worse, a hundred times worse. The thing Wormtail had been carrying had the shape of a crouched human child, except that I had never seen anything less like a child. It was hairless and scaly-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face - no child alive ever had a face like that - flat and snakelike, with gleaming red eyes.

The thing seemed almost helpless; it raised its thin arms, put them around Wormtail's neck, and Wormtail lifted it. As he did so, his hood fell back, and I saw the look of revulsion on Wormtail's weak, pale face in the firelight as he carried the creature to the rim of the cauldron. For one moment, I saw the evil, flat face illuminated in the sparks dancing on the surface of the potion. And then Wormtail lowered the creature into the cauldron; there was a hiss, and it vanished below the surface; I heard its frail body hit the bottom with a soft thud.

Let it drown, I thought, please... Let it fucking drown...

Wormtail was speaking. His voice shook; he seemed frightened beyond his wits. He raised his wand, closed his eyes, and spoke to the night.

"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"

The surface of the grave at Harry's feet cracked. Horrified, me and Harry watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Wormtail's command and fell softly into the cauldron. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed; it sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue.

And now Wormtail was whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from inside his cloak. His voice broke into petrified sobs.

"Flesh - of the servant - w-willingly given - you will - revive - your master."

He stretched his right hand out in front of him - the hand with the missing finger. He gripped the dagger very tightly in his left hand and swung it upward.

I realized what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened - I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, but I could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through me as though I had been stabbed with the dagger too. I heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail's anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. I couldn't stand to look... but the potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through my closed eyelids...

Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until I heard the next part did I open my eyes.

"B-blood of the enemy...forcibly taken...you will...resurrect your foe."

Harry could do nothing to prevent it, and neither could I, we were tied too tightly... Squinting down, struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding him. I saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtail's remaining hand. I saw its point penetrate the crook of Harry's right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, rumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Harry's cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it.

He turned to me, the knife raised. Shit.

"Blood, of the wolf... Unwillingly given... you will... strengthen y-your enemy."

Unlike with Harry, Wormtail's motion with the knife wasn't so subtle and painless. He slashed it down, and I felt a burning pain on my arm, and, almost instinctively, my teeth locked together so the snarl building up escaped between them. The burning sensation, mixed with the fact it was healing at a much slower rate indicated silver; indeed, my eyesight blurred for a few moments and my head throbbed. He held another vial to the deep gash and my blood seeped into it.

He staggered back to the cauldron with mine and Harry's blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Wormtail, his job done, dropped to his knees beside the cauldron, then slumped sideways and lay on the ground, cradling the bleeding stump of his arm, gasping and sobbing. Serves you right motherfucker!

The cauldron was simmering, sending its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness. Nothing happened...

God if you're listening, I thought, if you let that thing drown, I promise to be good for the rest of my miserable life! I'll say sorry to everyone I've ever insulted! I'll even by Snape a birthday present! Just please let it have drowned!

And then, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron instead, obliterating everything in front of us, so that we couldn't see Wormtail or Cedric or anything but vapor hanging in the air... It's gone wrong, I thought... it's drowned... please... please let it be dead...

But then, through the mist in front of us, I saw, with an icy surge of terror, the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rising slowly from inside the cauldron.

"Robe me," said the high, cold voice from behind the steam that sent shivers down my spine, and Wormtail, sobbing and moaning, still cradling his mutilated arm, scrambled to pick up the black robes from the ground, got to his feet, reached up, and pulled them one-handed over his master's head.

The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at me and Harry... and I stared back into the face that would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life, if I lived through this night. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snakes with slits for nostrils...

Lord Voldemort had risen again.


	19. Odd Wands

Voldemort looked away from me and Harry and began examining his own body. His hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cats, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness. He held up his hands and flexed the fingers, his expression rapt and exultant. He took not the slightest notice of Wormtail, who lay twitching and bleeding on the ground, nor of the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was circling Harry again, hissing. Voldemort slipped one of those unnaturally long-fingered hands into a deep pocket and drew out a wand. He caressed it gently too; and then he raised it, and pointed it at Wormtail, who was lifted off the ground and thrown against the headstone where Harry was tied; he fell to the foot of it and lay there, crumpled up and crying. Voldemort turned his scarlet eyes upon me and Harry, laughing a high, cold, mirthless laugh that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

Wormtail's robes were shining with blood now; he had wrapped the stump of his arm in them.

"My Lord..." he choked, "my Lord... you promised... you did promise..."

"Hold out your arm," said Voldemort lazily.

"Oh Master... thank you, Master..."

He extended the bleeding stump, but Voldemort laughed again.

"The other arm, Wormtail."

"Master, please... please..."

Voldemort bent down and pulled out Wormtail's left arm; he forced the sleeve of Wormtail's robes up past his elbow, and I saw something upon the skin there, something like a vivid red tattoo - a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth - the image that had appeared in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup: the Dark Mark. Voldemort examined it carefully, ignoring Wormtail's uncontrollable weeping.

"It is back," he said softly, "they will all have noticed it... and now, we shall see... now we shall know..."

He pressed his long white forefinger to the brand on Wormtail's arm and Wormtail let out a fresh howl; Voldemort removed his fingers from Wormtail's mark, and I saw that it had turned jet black.

A look of cruel satisfaction on his face, Voldemort straightened up, threw back his head, and stared around at the dark graveyard.

"How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it?" he whispered, his gleaming red eyes fixed upon the stars. "And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?"

He began to pace up and down before me, Harry and Wormtail, eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while. After a minute or so, he looked down at Harry again, a cruel smile twisting his snakelike face.

"You stand, Harry Potter, upon the remains of my late father," he hissed softly. "A Muggle and a fool... very like your dear mother. But they both had their uses, did they not? Your mother died to defend you as a child... and I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself, in death..."

Voldemort laughed again. Up and down he paced, looking all around him as he walked, and the snake continued to circle in the grass. This was creepy.

"You see that house upon the hillside, Potter? My father lived there. My mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with him. But he abandoned her when she told him what she was... He didn't like magic, my father...

"He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born. Potter, and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in a Muggle orphanage... but I vowed to find him... I revenged myself upon him, that fool who gave me his name... Tom Riddle..."

"Good for you," I growled out. I'd had enough, I'd seen enough. If I was going to die, I wanted it to not be drawn out. If I hadn't been through this much, I might've had the sense to let my brain sort out the words before my mouth said them. "Look at you, the evil overlord, reliving his family history to a couple of teens."

Voldemort gave me a bone chilling smile. He raised his wand.

"Crucio!"

The pain was so intense, so all-consuming, that I no longer knew where I was... White-hot knives were piercing every inch of my skin, my head was surely going to burst with pain, yet, I made no sound.

I don't know how long he kept it up for, but when it finally stopped, the air was full of the swishing of cloaks. Between graves, behind the yew tree, in every shadowy space, wizards were Apparating. All of them were hooded and masked.

I closed my eyes. Okay, maybe insulting Voldemort when I was so close to death wasn't such a good idea, but it kept him away from Harry for a while, didn't it?

When I finally began listening, it seemed Voldemort was giving some sort of speech. I blinked, focusing my eyes.

"... Wormtail's body, of course, was ill adapted for possession, as all assumed him dead, and would attract far too much attention if noticed. However, he was the able-bodied servant I needed, and, poor wizard though he is, Wormtail was able to follow the instructions I gave him, which would return me to a rudimentary, weak body of my own, a body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential ingredients for true rebirth...a spell or two of my own invention...a little help from my dear Nagini," Voldemort's red eyes fell upon the continually circling snake, "a potion concocted from unicorn blood, and the snake venom Nagini provided...I was soon returned to an almost human form, and strong enough to travel.

"There was no hope of stealing the Sorcerer's Stone anymore, for I knew that Dumbledore would have seen to it that it was destroyed. But I was willing to embrace mortal life again, before chasing immortality. I set my sights lower... I would settle for my old body back again, and my old strength.

"I knew that to achieve this - it is an old piece of Dark Magic, the potion that revived me tonight - I would need four powerful ingredients. Well, one of them was already at hand, was it not, Wormtail? Flesh given by a servant...

"My father's bone, naturally, meant that we would have to come here, where he was buried. But the blood of a foe... Wormtail would have had me use any wizard, would you not, Wormtail? Any wizard who had hated me... as so many of them still do. But I knew the one I must use, if I was to rise again, more powerful than I had been when I had fallen. I wanted Harry Potters blood. I wanted the blood of the one who had stripped me of power thirteen years ago...for the lingering protection his mother once gave him would then reside in my veins too... Then, there was the thing that would make me more powerful than ever before; the unwilling sacrifice from a hybrid beast... half werewolf, half Lycan..." I could feel everyone staring at me as I glared at Voldemort. I understood now; the blood of the last of a species... of one of the most powerful species to walk the earth... The blood on my arm had gone cold due to the temperature, but most of it was dry, and I wondered if it had healed.

"But how to get at Lupin or Potter? For they have been better protected than I think even they know, protected in ways devised by Dumbledore long ago, when it fell to him to arrange the boy's future. Dumbledore invoked an ancient magic, to ensure the boy's protection as long as he is in his relations' care. Not even I can touch him there... Then, of course, there was the Quidditch World Cup... I thought their protection might be weaker there, away from their relations and Dumbledore, but I was not yet strong enough to attempt kidnap in the midst of a horde of Ministry wizards. And then, the boys would return to Hogwarts, where they are under the crooked nose of that Muggle-loving fool from morning until night. So how could I take them?

"Why... by using Bertha Jorkins's information, of course. Use my one faithful Death Eater, stationed at Hogwarts, to ensure that the boy's names were entered into the Goblet of Fire. Use my Death Eater to ensure that the boy won the tournament - that they touched the Triwizard Cup first - the cup which my Death Eater had turned into a Portkey, which would bring him here, beyond the reach of Dumbledore's help and protection, and into my waiting arms. And here they are... the dog and the boy you all believed had been my downfall..."

Voldemort moved slowly forward and turned to face Harry. He raised his wand.

"Crucio!"

Harry screamed, a sound muffled by the gag in his mouth. He writhed in pain and I felt a snarl build from deep in my chest.

It then stopped. He was hanging limply in the ropes binding him to the headstone of Voldemort's father, and I was looking up into those bright red eyes through a kind of angry red fog. The night was ringing with the sound of the Death Eaters' laughter.

I growled.

"You see, I think, how foolish it was to suppose that this boy could ever have been stronger than me," said Voldemort. "But I want there to be no mistake in anybody's mind. Harry Potter escaped me by a lucky chance. And I am now going to prove my power by killing him, here and now, in front of you all, when there is no Dumbledore to help him, and no mother to die for him. I will give him his chance. He will be allowed to fight, and you will be left in no doubt which of us is the stronger. Just a little longer, Nagini," he whispered, and the snake glided away through the grass to where the Death Eaters stood watching.

"Now untie them, Wormtail, and give Harry back his wand."

Wormtail approached me and Harry, who scrambled to find his feet, to support his own weight before the ropes were untied. Wormtail raised his new silver hand, pulled out the wad of material gagging Harry, and then, with one swipe, cut through the bonds tying Harry to the gravestone before using his own wand to release me from my chains

There was a split second, perhaps, when I might have considered running for it, but Death Eaters closed ranks, forming a tighter circle around me, Harry and Voldemort, so that the gaps where the missing Death Eaters should have stood were filled. Wormtail walked out of the circle to the place where Cedric's body lay and returned with Harry's wand, which he thrust roughly into Harry's hand without looking at him. Then Wormtail resumed his place in the circle of watching Death Eaters. My wand... which was in my back pocket...

Without having to think twice, I stood in fornt of Harry protectively, looking at Voldemort with what I hoped was an unterified expression. In truth, I wanted to run home, I wanted to curl up under my bed and never come out again. I wanted to be surrounded by my friends and family...

But this time, I knew no one could save me. I was going to die. And Harry was going to die with me.

He smiled evily at me.

"You wish to die first, Lupin?" he asked softly. I glared at him, not moving from my position in front of Harry.

Voldemort raised his wand, and before I could do anything to defend myself, before I could even move, I had been hit by the Cruciatus Curse for the second time that night. I clenched my teeth, writhing on the ground.

And then it was over. I gasped for breath, Death-Eater-Laughter cold and cruel upon my ears. Before I knew it, I had been hit with the Cruciatus Curse again. This time I couldn't keep silent; spasms shot up my body from different parts as a scream of pure agony escaped my throat. I wanted it to be over, I wanted to die. Death would be a relief.

Once it was over, I rolled onto my stomach, the grass cool against my burning skin. My bones were on fire, and I could feel the aftershocks jolting my pained muscles. I tried to picture my Dad's eyes, which had always seemed to make the pain go away, but I knew, where I was, he couldn't help me. I was never going to see my father again.

Something thick and heavy wrapped itself around my neck, making me jump in surprise. It was a silver collar. A chain swung from out of the ground and kept me in place while I looked uselessly up at Voldemort.

"You shall be treated like the common mutt you are, Lupin," spat Voldemort, glaring down at me. "And I shall deal with you, after I have dealed with 'The-Boy-Who-Lived'."

"You have been taught how to duel. Harry Potter?" said Voldemort softly, his red eyes glinting through the darkness.

I wanted to help, to fight, but I was drained. I could barely keep my eyes open, which, most likely, was what he'd wanted. I couldn't fight back.

"We bow to each other. Harry," said Voldemort, bending a little, but keeping his snakelike face upturned to Harry. "Come, the niceties must be observed... Dumbledore would like you to show manners... Bow to death, Harry..."

The Death Eaters were laughing again. Voldemort's lipless mouth was smiling. Harry did not bow. I wanted to yell at my friend, but it wouldn't do much good. We were dead. There was no way we were getting out of here alive.

"I said, bow," Voldemort said, raising his wand - Harry bent forward as though a huge, invisible hand were bending him ruthlessly forward, and the Death Eaters laughed harder than ever.

"Very good," said Voldemort softly, and as he raised his wand the pressure bearing down upon Harry lifted too. "And now you face me, like a man... straight-backed and proud, the way your father died...

"And now - we duel."

Harry was hit, again, with the Torture curse. His screams went through me, and I attempted to get onto my knees, but my wrists protested as I put weight on them. And then it stopped. Harry rolled over and scrambled to his feet; he was shaking as uncontrollably as Wormtail had done when his hand had been cut off; he staggered sideways into the wall of watching Death Eaters, and they pushed him away, back toward Voldemort.

"A little break," said Voldemort, the slit-like nostrils dilating with excitement, "a little pause...That hurt, didn't it. Harry? You don't want me to do that again, do you?"

Harry didn't answer. I felt hopelessness fill me up... we were going to die, and there was nothing we could do about it...

"I asked you whether you want me to do that again," said Voldemort softly. "Answer me! Imperio!"

"I WON'T!" Harry shouted after a few moments of internal struggling, the words echoed through the graveyard.

"You won't?" said Voldemort quietly, and the Death Eaters were not laughing now. "You won't say no? Harry, obedience is a virtue I need to teach you before you die... Perhaps another little dose of pain?"

Voldemort raised his wand, but this time Harry was ready; he flung himself sideways onto the ground; he rolled behind the marble headstone of Voldemort's father, it cracked as the curse missed him.

"We are not playing hide-and-seek, Harry," said Voldemort's soft, cold voice as the Death Eaters laughed. "You cannot hide from me. Does this mean you are tired of our duel? Does this mean that you would prefer me to finish it now, Harry? Come out, Harry... come out and play, then... it will be quick... it might even be painless... I would not know... I have never died..."

Those words alone sent a shiver up my spine. Before Voldemort could stick his snakelike face around the headstone, Harry threw himself around the headstone, facing Voldemort with his wand extended.

Voldemort was ready. As Harry shouted, "Expelliarmus!" Voldemort cried, "Avada Kedavra!"

A jet of green light issued from Voldemort's wand just as a jet of red light blasted from Harry's - they met in midair - and suddenly Harry's wand was vibrating as though an electric charge were surging through it; his hand seized up around it; and I knew he couldn't have released it if he'd wanted to - and a narrow beam of light connected the two wands, neither red nor green, but bright, deep gold. Following the beam with my astonished gaze, I saw that Voldemort's long white fingers too were gripping a wand that was shaking and vibrating.

The Death Eaters were shouting; they were asking Voldemort for instructions; they were closing in, reforming the circle around Harry and Voldemort, the snake slithering at their heels, some of them drawing their wands -

The golden thread connecting Harry and Voldemort splintered; though the wands remained connected, a thousand more beams arced high over Harry and Voldemort, crisscrossing all around them, until they were enclosed in a golden, dome-shaped web, a cage of light, beyond which the Death Eaters circled like jackals. I had a sudden inspiration.

"Do nothing!" Voldemort shrieked to the Death Eaters, and I saw his red eyes wide with astonishment at what was happening, saw him fighting to break the thread of light still connecting his wand with Harry's; Harry held onto his wand more tightly, with both hands, and the golden thread remained unbroken. "Do nothing unless I command you!" Voldemort shouted to the Death Eaters.

And then an unearthly and beautiful sound filled the air... It was coming from every thread of the light-spun web vibrating around Harry and Voldemort. It was phoenix song.

One of the beads of light was quivering, inches from the tip of Voldemort's wand. I didn't understand why Harry was doing it, didn't know what it might achieve... and slowly... very slowly... it moved along the golden thread... it trembled for a moment... and then it connected...

At once, Voldemort's wand began to emit echoing screams of pain... then - Voldemort's red eyes widened with shock - a dense, smoky hand flew out of the tip of it and vanished... the ghost of the hand he had made Wormtail... more shouts of pain... and then something much larger began to blossom from Voldemort's wand tip, a great, grayish something, that looked as though it were made of the solidest, densest smoke... It was a head... now a chest and arms... the torso of Cedric Diggory.

What?

Cedric's ghost emerged in its entirety from the end of Voldemort's wand, as though it were squeezing itself out of a very narrow tunnel... and this shade of Cedric stood up, and looked up and down the golden thread of light, and spoke.

"Hold on. Harry," I heard him say.

Its voice was distant and echoing. I looked at Voldemort... his wide red eyes were still shocked... he had no more expected this than I had. I heard the frightened yells of the Death Eaters, prowling around the edges of the golden dome.

More screams of pain from the wand... and then something else emerged from its tip...the dense shadow of a second head, quickly followed by arms and torso... an old man was now pushing himself out of the end of the wand just as Cedric had done... and his ghost, or his shadow, or whatever it was, fell next to Cedric's, and surveyed Harry and Voldemort, and the golden web, and the connected wands, with mild surprise, leaning on his walking stick...

"He was a real wizard, then?" the old man said, his eyes on Voldemort. "Killed me, that one did... You fight him, boy..."

But already, yet another head was emerging...and this head, gray as a smoky statue, was a woman's... Harry, both arms shaking now as he fought to keep his wand still, I saw her drop to the ground and straighten up like the others, staring...

The shadow of Bertha Jorkins surveyed the battle before her with wide eyes.

"Don't let go, now!" she cried, and her voice echoed like Cedric's as though from very far away. "Don't let him get you, Harry - don't let go!"

She and the other two shadowy figures began to pace around the inner walls of the golden web, while the Death Eaters flitted around the outside of it...and Voldemort's dead victims whispered as they circled the duelers, whispered words of encouragement to Harry, and hissed words I couldn't hear to Voldemort.

And now another head was emerging from the tip of Voldemort's wand... The smoky shadow of a tall man with untidy hair fell to the ground as Bertha had done, straightened up, and looked at him...and Harry, his arms shaking madly now, looked back into the ghostly face of his father.

This had to be good, right?

"Your mother's coming..." he said quietly. "She wants to see you... it will be all right... hold on..."

And she came... first her head, then her body... a young woman with long hair, the smoky, shadowy form of Lily Potter blossomed from the end of Voldemort's wand, fell to the ground, and straightened like her husband. She walked close to Harry, looking down at him, and she whispered something in his ear.

"NOW!" Harry yelled suddenly; he pulled his wand upward with an almighty wrench, and the golden thread broke; the cage of light vanished, the phoenix song died - but the shadowy figures of Voldemort's victims did not disappear - they were closing in upon Voldemort, shielding Harry from his gaze -

I took this as my only chance.

With any of my remaining strength, I grabbed at the collar with both hands. I felt it snap satisfyingly as I shot up, my torn muscles protesting, but I wasn't listening.

And I ran as I had never run in my life, knocking two stunned Death Eaters aside as I passed; I zigzagged behind headstones, feeling their curses following me, hearing them hit the headstones - I was dodging curses and graves, pelting toward Cedric's body, no longer aware of the pain, my whole being concentrated on what I had to do -

I had reached Harry, and I grabbed his wrist, running as fast as I could run.

"Stun them!" I heard Voldemort scream.

Ten feet from Cedric, I sped up, panting from the effort of keeping my aching body moving. Harry twisted round, wand raised.

"Impedimenta!" he bellowed, pointing his wand wildly over his shoulder at the Death Eaters running at us.

From a muffled yell, I thought he had stopped at least one of them, but there was no time to stop and look; I jumped over the cup and dived as I heard more wand blasts behind me; more jets of light flew over our heads as we fell.

"Stand aside! I will kill them! They are mine!" shrieked Voldemort. Harry's hand had closed on Cedric's wrist, the other one on mine; one tombstone stood between us and Voldemort, but Cedric was too heavy to carry, and the cup was out of reach -

Voldemort's red eyes flamed in the darkness. I saw his mouth curl into a smile, saw him raise his wand.

"Avada Kedavra!" he shrieked, and the green light shot from his wand. The brightness of it obliverated my sight completely, and I felt a force slam into me like an iron clad punch to the chest. It knocked me backwards slightly, but I kept a firm hold on Harry and Cedric's wrists as I heard Harry yell "Accio!"

The Triwizard cup. It flew into the air and soared toward us. Harry caught it by the handle -

I heard Voldemort's scream of fury at the same moment that I felt the jerk behind my navel that meant the Portkey had worked - it was speeding us away in a whirl of wind and color, and Cedric along with us... We were going back.


	20. We Find Out The Truth Kind Of

I had closed my eyes while the Portkey transported us, and I kept them closed now. I did not move. All the breath seemed to have been knocked out of me; my head was swimming so badly I felt as though the ground beneath me were swaying like the deck of a ship. Shock and exhaustion kept me on the ground, breathing in the smell of the grass as it tickled my bare chest, waiting... waiting for someone to do something... something to happen... and all the while, my whole body ached and throbbed...

I should be dead. I thought repeatedly. I was hit with the Killing Curse. For a moment, I wondered if I was dead, but the pain, both physically and mentally, assured me I wasn't. The place the curse had hit me felt like it had cracked one of my ribs, and every short, uneven breath was painful.

A torrent of sound deafened and confused me; there were voices everywhere, footsteps, screams... I remained where I was, my face screwed up against the noise, as though it were a nightmare that would pass...

Then a pair of hands seized me roughly and turned me over.

"Jack! Harry!"

I opened my eyes.

I was looking up at the starry sky, and Albus Dumbledore was crouched over me. The dark shadows of a crowd of people pressed in around us, pushing nearer; I felt the ground beneath my head reverberating with their footsteps.

We had come back to the edge of the maze. I could see the stands rising above me, the shapes of people moving in them, the stars above.

I let go of Cedric and Harry, bringing one hand up to clutch the spot on my ribs where the curse had hit me. It felt like a very painful bruise and it had definitely broke a rib Dumbledore's face swam in and out of focus.

"He's back," I heard Harry whisper. "He's back. Voldemort."

"What's going on? What's happened?"

The face of Cornelius Fudge appeared upside down over me; it looked white, appalled.

"My God - Diggory!" he whispered. "Dumbledore - he's dead!"

The words were repeated, the shadowy figures pressing in on us gasped it to those around them...and then others shouted it - screeched it - into the night - "He's dead!" "He's dead!" "Cedric Diggory! Dead!"

"Harry, let go of him," I heard Fudge's voice say, but Harry wouldn't let him go. Then Dumbledore's face, which was still blurred and misted, came closer.

"Harry, you can't help him now. It's over. Let go."

"He wanted us to bring him back," I muttered, keeping my eyes away from Cedric's body. "He wanted us to bring him back to his parents..."

"That's right, Jack. Harry... just let go now..."

Dumbledore bent down, and with extraordinary strength for a man so old and thin, raised me and Harry from the ground and set us on our feet. I swayed. My head was pounding. The crowd around us jostled, fighting to get closer, pressing darkly in on us - "What's happened?" "What's wrong with him?" "Diggory's dead!"

"They'll need to go to the hospital wing!" Fudge was saying loudly. "They're ill, They're injured - Dumbledore, Diggory's parents, they're here, they're in the stands..."

"I'll take them, Dumbledore, I'll take them -"

"No, I would prefer-"

"Dumbledore, Amos Diggory's running... he's coming over... Don't you think you should tell him - before he sees - ?"

"Boys, stay here -"

Girls were screaming, sobbing hysterically... The scene flickered oddly before my eyes...

"Its all right, son, I've got you... come on... hospital wing..."

"Dumbledore said stay," I dimly heard Harry say, the pounding in my head was making me feel as though I was about to throw up; my vision was blurring worse than ever.

"You need to lie down... Come on now..."

Someone larger than me was half pulling, half carrying Harry and I through the frightened crowd. I heard people gasping, screaming, and shouting as the man supporting me pushed a path through them, taking us back to the castle. Across the lawn, past the lake and the Durmstrang ship, I heard nothing but the heavy breathing of the man helping me walk.

"What happened?" the man asked at last as he lifted me up the stone steps.

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. It was Mad-Eye Moody.

"Cup was a Portkey," said Harry as we crossed the entrance hall. "Took me and Cedric to a graveyard... and Voldemort was there... Lord Voldemort..."

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Up the marble stairs...

"The Dark Lord was there? What happened then?"

"Killed Cedric... They killed Cedric..." Harry managed out. The dull, burning throbbing in my chest was making things hard to manage and I wondered if my heart was struggling to work properly. You should be dead. The voice in my head told me. That was the killing curse, you should be dead right now.

Shut up, I told it.

"And then?"

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Along the corridor...

"Made a potion... got his body back..." I muttered.

"The Dark Lord got his body back? He's returned?"

"And the Death Eaters came... and then we dueled..." Harry said in the same, tired, dull voice I was sure was mirrored in my own tone.

"You dueled with the Dark Lord?"

"Got away... my wand... did something funny... I saw my mum and dad... they came out of his wand..."

"In here, boys... in here, and sit down... You'll be all right now... drink this..."

I heard a key scrape in a lock and felt a cup being pushed into my hands.

"Drink it... you'll feel better... come on, now, boys, I need to know exactly what happened..."

Moody helped tip the stuff down my throat; I coughed, a peppery taste burning my throat. Moody's office came into sharper focus, and so did Moody himself... He looked as white as Fudge had looked, and both eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon my face. Why was that good? I could think. Why was it bad? I really didn't want to.

"Voldemort's back? You're sure he's back? How did he do it?"

"He took stuff from his father's grave, and from Wormtail, and me and Jack," said Harry. My head felt clearer; my chest wasn't hurting so badly; I could now see Moodys face distinctly, even though the office was dark. I could still hear screaming and shouting from the distant Quidditch field.

"What did the Dark Lord take from you?" said Moody.

"Blood," I said, absently rubbing my arm. The nearly healed gash felt long, and I was already sure a scar was in the making..

Moody let out his breath in a long, low hiss.

"And the Death Eaters? They returned?"

"Yes," said Harry. "Loads of them..."

"How did he treat them?" Moody asked quietly. "Did he forgive them?"

But I had suddenly remembered. I should have told Dumbledore, I should have said it straight away-

"There's a Death Eater at Hogwarts! There's a Death Eater here - they put our names in the Goblet of Fire, they made sure we got through to the end -"

I tried to get up, but Moody pushed me back down.

"I know who the Death Eater is," he said quietly.

"Karkaroff?" said Harry wildly. "Where is he? Have you got him? Is he locked up?"

"Karkaroff?" said Moody with an odd laugh. "Karkaroff fled tonight, when he felt the Dark Mark burn upon his arm. He betrayed too many faithful supporters of the Dark Lord to wish to meet them... But I doubt he will get far. The Dark Lord has ways of tracking his enemies."

"Karkaroff's gone? He ran away? But then - he didn't put our names in the goblet?" Harry said slowly.

"No," said Moody slowly. "No, he didn't. It was I who did that."

What the...?

"No, you didn't," Harry said. "You didn't do that... You can't have done..."

"I assure you I did," said Moody, and his magical eye swung around and fixed upon the door, and I knew he was making sure that there was no one outside it. At the same time, Moody drew out his wand and pointed it at me.

"He forgave them, then?" he said. "The Death Eaters who went free? The ones who escaped Azkaban?"

"What?" I asked. I was looking at the wand Moody was pointing at me. This was a bad joke, it had to be.

"I asked you," said Moody quietly, "whether he forgave the scum who never even went to look for him. Those treacherous cowards who wouldn't even brave Azkaban for him. The faithless, worthless bits of filth who were brave enough to cavort in masks at the Quidditch World Cup, but fled at the sight of the Dark Mark when I fired it into the sky."

"You fired... What are you talking about...?" asked Harry.

"I told you, Harry... I told you. If there's one thing I hate more than any other, it's a Death Eater who walked free. They turned their backs on my master when he needed them most. I expected him to punish them. I expected him to torture them. Tell me he hurt them..." Moody's face was suddenly lit with an insane smile. "Tell me he told them that I, I alone remained faithful... Prepared to risk everything to deliver to him the one thing he wanted above all... You two"

"You didn't... It - it can't be you..." Oh poor Harry.

"Who put your name in the Goblet of Fire, under the name of a different school? I did. Who frightened off every person I thought might try to hurt you or prevent you from winning the tournament? I did. Who nudged Hagrid into showing you the dragons? I did. Who helped you see the only way you could beat the dragon? I did"

Moody's magical eye had now left the door. It was fixed upon me. His lopsided mouth leered more widely than ever.

"It hasn't been easy, boys, guiding you through these tasks without arousing suspicion. I have had to use every ounce of cunning I possess, so that my hand would not be detectable in your success. Dumbledore would have been very suspicious if you had managed everything too easily. As long as you both got into that maze, preferably with a decent head start - then, I knew, I would have a chance of getting rid of the other champions and leaving your ways clear. But I also had to contend with your stupidity. The second task... That was when I was most afraid we would fail. I was keeping watch on you, Potter. I knew you hadn't worked out the egg's clue, so I had to give you another hint-"

"You didn't," Harry said hoarsely. "Cedric gave me the clue -"

"Who told Cedric to open it underwater? I did. I trusted that he would pass the information on to you. Decent people are so easy to manipulate. I was sure Cedric would want to repay you for telling him about the dragons, and so he did. But even then, Potter, even then you seemed likely to fail. I was watching all the time... All those hours in the library. Didn't you realize that the book you needed was in your dormitory all along? I planted it there early on, I gave it to the Longbottom boy, don't you remember? Magical Water Plants of the Mediterranean. It would have told you all you needed to know about gillyweed. I expected you to ask everyone and anyone you could for help. Longbottom would have told you in an instant. But you did not... You did not...You have a streak of pride and independence that might have ruined all.

"So what could I do? Feed you information from another innocent source. You told me at the Yule Ball a house-elf called Dobby had given you a Christmas present. I called the elf to the staffroom to collect some robes for cleaning. I staged a loud conversation with Professor McGonagall about the hostages who had been taken, and whether Potter would think to use gillyweed. And your little elf friend ran straight to Snape's office and then hurried to find you..."

Moodys wand was still pointing directly at my heart. Over his shoulder, foggy shapes were moving in the Foe-Glass on the wall.

"You were so long in that lake, Lupin, Potter, I thought you had drowned. But luckily, Dumbledore took your idiocy for nobility, and marked you high for it. I breathed again.

"You had an easier time of it than you should have in that maze tonight, of course," said Moody. "I was patrolling around it, able to see through the outer hedges, able to curse many obstacles out of your ways. I Stunned Fleur Delacour as she passed. I put the Imperius Curse on Krum, so that he would finish Diggory and leave your path to the cup clear."

I stared at Moody. I just didn't see how this could be happening right now. Dumbledore's friend, the famous Auror... the one who had caught so many Death Eaters... It made no sense... No sense at all... Had I gone insane?

Possibly.

The foggy shapes in the Foe-Glass were sharpening, had become more distinct. I could see the outlines of three people over Moody's shoulder, moving closer and closer. But Moody wasn't watching them. His magical eye was upon Harry.

"The Dark Lord didn't manage to kill you. Potter, and he so wanted to," whispered Moody. "Imagine how he will reward me when he finds I have done it for him. I gave you to him -the thing he needed above all to regenerate - and then I killed you for him. I will be honored beyond all other Death Eaters. I will be his dearest, his closest supporter... Closer than a son. ..."

Moody's normal eye was bulging, the magical eye fixed upon Harry. The door was barred, and I knew I would never reach my own wand in time...

"The Dark Lord and I," said Moody, and he looked completely insane now, towering over Harry, leering down at him, "have much in common. Both of us, for instance, had very disappointing fathers... Very disappointing indeed. Both of us suffered the indignity, of being named after those fathers. And both of us had the pleasure... the very great pleasure... Of killing our fathers to ensure the continued rise of the Dark Order!"

"You're mad," I said. "you've completely fucking lost it!"

"Mad, am I?" said Moody, his voice rising uncontrollably. "We'll see! We'll see who's mad, now that the Dark Lord has returned, with me at his side! He is back, Lupin, you did not conquer him - and now - I conquer you!"

Moody raised his wand, he opened his mouth and yelled the Words "Avadea Kedavra!"

There was a blinding flash of red light, and with a great splintering and crashing, the door of Moody's office was blasted apart - Moody was thrown backward onto the office floor as the green light hit me in the chest and I was thrown backwards with the force of it. I heard McGonagall's scream of "No!" at the same time as Harry's, and my head cracked against the wall before everything went black.


	21. The Beginning of the End

When I finally regained consciousness, I felt much more comfortable than when I had lost it.

I could feel the presences of many people around me, and my other senses confirmed the appearances of Mrs. Weasley, Dumbledore, Ron, Bill, Sirius, Harry, Hermione and Madam Pomfrey.

As my brain began to wake up, I began to take notice of the conversation.

" - I'm serious; he got hit by the Killing Curse once in the graveyard, and then again in Moody's office by Crouch." came Harry's tired voice.

Crouch? I thought it was Moody who attempted to kill me.

"I know, but it's just not possible!" Mrs. Weasley's voice now broke through my subconscious.

"Quite," Dumbledore's voice was calm. "But tales of Lycanthropes who are able to withstand the curse are rare, but not entirely dismissed. Poppy, how is he?"

I felt a wave of energy pass over me, and recognized it as a wand diagnosis.

"Everything fine," came the matron's voice. "Considering he should be dead, he is in perfect health."

Everything came back then in a rush of memories; the graveyard, the killing curse (twice!) and Harry. Harry was injured, and Cedric was dead, Moody was a killer -

I sat up with a gasp, making everyone who had been crowded around my bedside jump. I placed a hand over my heart, assuring myself it was still beating.

It was, thank God.

"Jack," Dumbledore's voice made me snap my head round to look at him. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," I gasped, laying back down and breathing hard. "Still living... That's good..."

Madam Pomfrey, who had bustled off to her office, returned holding two small bottles of some purple potion and a goblet.

"You'll need to drink all of this," she said. "It's a potion for dreamless sleep."

I took the goblet and drank a few mouthfuls. I felt myself becoming drowsy at once. Everything around me became hazy; the lamps around the hospital wing seemed to be winking at me in a friendly way through the screen around our beds; my body felt as though it was sinking deeper into the warmth of the feather mattress. Before I could finish the potion, before I could say another word, my exhaustion had carried me off to sleep.

* * *

When I looked back, even a month later, I only had scattered memories of the days after Harry and I had returned with Cedric's body.

The recollections I did have were very painful. We'd met up with Mr. and Mrs. Diggory, and they thanked us for returning Cedric's body. I didn't say anything. Anything I could've said sounded insincere and false, so I didn't speak to them, rather let Harry do the talking.

We'd got the truth... Kind of. Turns out Moody was actually a Death Eater by the name of Barty Crouch Jr, who's father, Mr. Crouch, had broke him out of Azkaban and put him under the imperius curse to keep him under control. Jr Crouch was actually the one who'd sent the Dark Mark into the sky at the World Cup, and then he, Wormtail and Voldemort had put Mr. Crouch under the curse, kidnapped Moody and used the Pollyjuice potion to steal his appearance. He'd also killed Crouch Senior, and buried him in Hagrid's Pumpkin Patch.

It was safe to say Crouch Jr was insane.

Dumbledore had told people to leave me and Harry alone. Most people were skirting us in the corridors, avoiding our eyes. Some people whispered behind their hands as we passed. I guessed many people believed Rita Skeeter's article about how disturbed and dangerous we were. I found I didn't actually care very much.

I spent most of my time alone, either in the forest or in my dormitory. Socializing wasn't high on my list of important things. In fact, my social life had taken a turn for the worst.

The only people I actually spoke to were Harry, Ron and Hermione if I had to speak to anyone at all.

The first time I spoke to someone that wasn't my three friends was when I went down to the lake.

"I thought I'd find you here," Katherine's voice snapped me out of whatever mental stupor I was in. I turned around as she made it to where I was stood, watching over the lake. "I need to talk to you."

I kept my gaze on the lake. Kat and I hadn't spoken in days, not since a few days after I'd come back from the tournament. Now that we talked, everything came into the light. Her parents had seen the Rita Skeeter article about us, and were waiting until the end of the school year to take Kat out of school. They weren't fond of our relationship, and they were taking her back to Spain. Away from Hogwarts and away from me.

She was fighting with them. There was one thing keeping her here.

Me.

I knew what I had to do then. Voldemort had risen, and we weren't safe here. Kat needed to go away, but she wouldn't do that when we were still in love.

I knew what I had to do.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I thought I couldn't be with you, but I can," she said, smiling up at me while keeping hold of my hands. "You don't have to push me away. I can do this."

I looked at her face, into her violet eyes, and my mind was made up.

"I can't," I said, pleased to find my voice emotionless and steady. "I have to end it now. Too much has happened, it's too dangerous."

"What? No," she said, looking shocked and upset. "I know you think you're protecting me but -"

"I have to," I cut her off. "Thinking I could be normal, be with you... it was a mistake. I can't be with you anymore."

She gave me a fierce, teary look. "I can't give up on you, Jack."

"Yes you can." I said, dropping her hands and taking a step back. "It's done. We're done. I don't want to see you. I don't want to be with you."

Her expression nearly broke my resolve. I wanted to take her in my arms, tell her I didn't mean any of it and wanted her to stay. But I knew how Voldemort worked; he went after those you cared about most, and now, I was on hit list. Putting Katherine in danger was the last thing I wanted to do.

"I just want you to go." I said finally. I turned and walked away, but not before I saw the tear roll down her cheek.


End file.
